


Absolution

by mrhiddles



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Police, Blow Jobs, Drug Dealing, Explicit Sexual Content, Gun Violence, M/M, Thorki - Freeform, and sex things, dark things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-09
Updated: 2013-07-23
Packaged: 2017-12-10 21:25:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 35,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/790327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrhiddles/pseuds/mrhiddles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor is a disgraced police officer after having saved Loki, son of drug lord Laufey, from being killed by his own people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have nearly 20k of this already done, I just reached the point I needed feedback before I continued on with it. I love hearing your thoughts!
> 
> I have this planned to be about 30k total, but it might be a bit more depending on how many characters manage to worm their way in.

_“This is as good a place to fall as any  
We'll build our altar here”_

\--

The room is dank and smells like piss and Loki is chained to the single metal chair in the center of the room. The thin metal cuffs cut into his wrists and thin rivulets of red trail down numb fingers, dripping to the floor in a pattern of crimson. He’s pale and tired, the shadows making his smirk stand out, and Thor feels his gut clench at the sight. He likes it. He doesn’t like it.

“Look at me.”

Loki’s head rolls on his shoulders, the light catching a long, thin scar curving just below the strength of his jaw. He is silent.

Loki has not spoken for over a week. He’s not lifted his head for three days. Thor has brought him food and water but Loki refuses it all. The last he’d drunk of the water was two days ago.

Thor brings in a metal tub filled halfway with clean, hot water. He bathes Loki as much as he can. It’s a glorified sponge bath, but still. Thor tells himself he’s being kind.

Loki goes so quiet these days, Thor listens now for his breathing.

But today, Thor goes to Loki and kneels in front of him. Taking the point of Loki’s chin in one hand, he forces his face up, but he cannot force Loki’s eyes. They will not meet his own.

Again, this was a kindness…was it not?

The realm of prisoner and officer was breached weeks ago. When the world went to shit and Thor found out, with no lack of injury, that Loki had powerful allies. He’d almost lost half an arm that first day, and he still had a limp. Loki had been a smiling, weasel-faced creature. Full of snide comments and snark and perfect, impenetrable refusal. Refusal to go quietly. Even after the flames.

Now, Loki was still refusing, but in a different, disturbing way. One that stole away sleep and filled Thor’s thoughts with terrible things.

The quiet was the worst of it.

Maybe he wasn’t cut out to be a police officer. Maybe he had never been a good cop. Maybe Loki was going to die and he’d be the cause of it. Was he truly being kind?

His mind whispered no, but he kept Loki here anyway. There was nowhere else for him. For either of them.

“Loki, dammit,” Thor says, scowling back to the dregs of reality. “Loki, please. Drink something today.”

Loki’s lower lip quivers but he keeps his gaze trained to the floor. His lips are chapped, eyes glassy, and Thor feels a twinge of panic run through him. Loki’s sick.

“You’re dehydrated,” Thor says. The plastic jug sits at his side, and Thor sees Loki’s gaze fall to it.

There is a moment Thor thinks Loki will obey, will concede. But nothing happens and then Thor is grabbing Loki’s jaw and forcing his face up. Loki spits at him, a wet burn all the way down his cheek, and Thor sees red. He squeezes Loki’s jaw until he thinks he might break it, then shoves his head back harshly. His arms are tingling.

“Then shrivel for all I care,” Thor says, ascending the basement stairs to his living room. The keys rattle on his way out; a finality.

Loki’s chuckle follows him all the way out.

The problem is that he cares. Very much.

And he doesn’t exactly know why that is.

\--

After a few days more, Thor brings down the metal basin. Sets it on the floor by the hose and jets water into the bin, the sound raging through the room like an angry rush. Thor doesn’t speak to Loki as he does this. He rarely does anymore. It’s become routine.

He locked the door before he came down, left the keys in the spot under the stairs that’s not visible from where Loki is sitting, so he doesn’t worry when he unlocks the cuffs on Loki’s wrists. He doesn’t try to run. Loki never does.

Loki doesn’t look at him as his shirt is pulled over his head. He’s thinner, and the skin is pale, unmarked, save for the large gash that was still healing. That first day had been horrible for everyone involved. Thor had tried to stitch it himself, but…he’s no doctor.

He hadn’t known Loki to feel pain before that.

The shirt is dropped to the stone floor, beside the pile of clean clothes he brought down. They’re all Thor’s. He didn’t want to risk going out and buying a bunch of clothes that didn’t fit _him_. He knew how forensics tracked that sort of stuff. What he was doing…wasn’t legal. He wasn’t a cop. Not anymore.

He sets the new bandages beside him, along with a few other medical dressings. Thor may be keeping Loki cuffed under his home, but he wasn’t going to let his wounds fester.

Thor wants to ask why doesn’t Loki undress himself. But that would break the careful silence they’ve managed to construct the last few weeks. They’ve shared probably less than four sentences between them. But still, he wants to ask. Despite everything, after all they’ve been through since this all started, Thor finds he’s scared of what that could mean. To hear what Loki has to say.

Maybe he doesn’t want to know.

To ask would be to also disrupt the careful weave they’ve wrought. There is a part of Thor, somewhere in the corner of his heart, that likes undressing Loki. That enjoys seeing the pale line of his thin form stand as tall as him. He likes this part of their interaction. It’s the only time he’s allowed to touch what he shouldn’t even have.

Loki is eager to be done with this today, and Thor is surprised when Loki kicks off his own pants and underwear and arranges himself in the tub. He grabs up the hose, and squeezes the trigger beside the head once, the spray shooting out across his fingers.

His eyes slide to Thor’s.

Thor inhales, it hurts. Then he walks over and hands Loki the shampoo that he’d set down a few feet away. He hands Loki the conditioner next.

Loki douses his own hair, those bright eyes closing off from the world as he washes himself this time. Thor finds he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so he grabs up the bandages and just stands there, watching. A slow itch creeps over his neck, raising the fine hair there and he jolts when Loki speaks. The first time in what seems forever.

“You are staring. Leave.” But there is no malice in his voice, and Thor wonders at it.

They both know he won’t. That he can’t.

Loki’s inky hair is a mess of suds and it drips down the long line of his neck before he rinses them away with the powerful beam of water. It must hurt. It never looked that strong when Thor used it.

Thor sits in Loki’s metal chair, facing away while Loki finishes. His back is hurting by the time he hears the water shut off and then he is handing Loki his clothes. While Thor applies the bandage, by now a practiced routine, the skin of Loki’s side pulls over lean muscle as he tenses at the touch.

Thor tries to ignore it.

Loki dresses himself this time but his eyes remain on the floor.

\--

Loki is tensing his jaw when he sees what Thor has brought the next morning.

Before he even fixed Loki breakfast, he’d driven down to the local Allmart and bought, against his screaming better judgment, a full sized mattress. The basement is dry at the very least, and won’t be moldy in the long run. He wonders if Loki smells the piss anymore. The smell haunts Thor through his entire home, no matter how much he scrubs the place down. As does everything that lies below.

He won’t admit a large part of this purchase is driven by the guilt he feels. He won’t.

Thor pushes the mattress up against where Loki sits chained, and gestures for Loki to stand while he moves the chair aside. There’s enough leverage to switch between the two if Loki wants, and Thor is glad for that. He’d stood staring at the thing for twenty minutes in the store, worrying about bed sores. Did young people even get those? Loki couldn’t have been older than his mid twenties.

Another fact that twisted his gut.

Loki was watching the smile inch along Thor’s face while he eyed his handy work. Thor only catches it because it morphs into a severe glare when their eyes lock.

“That chair is atrocious.” It’s the only explanation Loki will get, and he seems to realize that.

Loki gives him a look that tells Thor exactly what he knew of that chair. And wasn’t it his fault in the first place?

But Loki seems to be back to not speaking, and so Thor turns for the stairs.

He says, “I’ll be back down with some breakfast.”

He tries to ignore the scrape of metal across stone as Loki refuses to accept his guilt for what it is.

\--

Loki bathes himself now and Thor curses himself for having even wondered the idea. Now even that small luxury has been taken from him.

As it should be, he thinks.

But he doesn’t sleep that night either. His heart pounds, and when he finally slips away to dreams in the prelight of dawn, he wakes only an hour later, hard and sweating and panicked. Cornered.

He feels cornered.

\--

The next day he doesn’t see Loki until mid afternoon.

The smell invades his nostrils harder today than it has in weeks and he desperately wants to douse the place in bleach. In acid. No matter how many times he cleans out the pails that make up Loki’s excuse for a bathroom, he can’t get rid of the smell.

Something inside him breaks when Loki watches him curiously, obviously wondering why he had not been in the morning. Thor sets down the food and thinks back on the precinct he’d seen go up in fire, the men he’d seen shot and burned in that field. They were dead and he was housing their murderer. Well, Loki hadn’t held the gun…

Thor remembers Loki bound for trade, and Fandral the same. On his knees in the dirt and then all that _red_ —

A wave of stench, mixed with the food, reaches him and Thor backs away too quickly to be casual. He leaves Loki there, the food perhaps just out of reach. But he doesn’t care, he just needs to be rid of that smell.

Upstairs, he eyes his too large bed and the perfectly usable bathroom, full plumbing just waiting to be utilized. But then he remembers this morning, and knows it as the risk it is. A chance he would never take.

Below him, chained to a support beam on that metal chair, he hopes Loki is at least drinking that jug of water.

\--

He dreams he’s being buried and he wakes up choking for air.

The stench reaches him even here.

\--

He brings Loki takeout for dinner and is happy to see Loki at least pick at the food, like he’s curious as to what it is. He still doesn’t eat and Thor is forced to toss more untouched food. He would save it, but—

There’s no point in eating your prisoner’s food.

\--

That night he wakes disoriented to a vague shuffling sound. It breaches the haze of sleep and it persists enough to rouse him. He sits up, bracing himself on his elbows and tries to pinpoint what it is.

Thor is shocked he’d fallen asleep so early in the first place, until he realizes the shuffling is really coughing. He forgets where he is and who he has chained to a chair in the basement of his house for all of a moment, then he’s tripping over himself to reach Loki before he does something stupid.

He’s in loose pajama bottoms that do nothing to protect his knees as he hits the hard floor, coming to kneel just before Loki, whose wrists are chafed and scabbed and bleeding, and he’s coughing so violently it hurts Thor just to witness it.

There’s blood everywhere, up to one of Loki’s elbows and Thor has no idea from where or what. He grabs Loki’s face, pries his mouth open with shaking fingers and is relieved to see nothing Loki tried to swallow. There’s blood on his arms now too and Thor blanks.

The key finds the slot in the cuffs before he can even comprehend it. Loki stills, then his arms shoot out and smear wet red across Thor’s face, stinging in his eyes and filling his nose but he bears it. He bears the sting to open his eyes and grip Loki’s fleeing form about the waist, throwing him bodily to the mattress with a snarl.

He pins Loki there with one arm at his neck, the other at his lower back. Loki’s legs are kicking all over the place, and the mattress is a mess of bright and already browning red. Loki is spitting and cursing and throwing names around and Thor can see tears in his eyes.

Failure. Loki keeps repeating failure.

Thor isn’t sure if Loki is talking to him.

“Do you want to be chained at the legs as well?” He growls above Loki, who goes still at the threat. Another cough escapes him, but he bites it off. He huffs into the sheets and that’s that. Thor tastes bile in his throat. “Do you?” And his voice does not shake.

“I—” Then Loki quiets, shutting back down.

“You will remain here until I no longer want you here.” The words pour out of him so quickly, though he has no memory of thinking them before he lets them loose. “You will drink all the water I give you, and you will eat all that I serve you. I don’t care if I hand you a fucking mint, you will eat it, and you will hand me the wrapper when you’re finished.” Spit flies from his mouth, spotting the wild mess of Loki’s hair as he fidgets. “If you do not do these things, I will be forced to kill you.”

It’s not a complete lie, and it sets Thor’s stomach to boiling.

Loki begins to squirm beneath him so Thor presses harder into his back, his neck. Loki spits into the mattress, suffocating. Red paints the sheets and the tang of copper coats the air they breathe.

“Loki?” Thor rumbles, waiting.

Loki’s eyes close and Thor jostles him to where he opens them again.

“Loki!” Thor snarls.

Loki shouts as much as he can, pinned as he is, “Kill me then!”

Thor pulls back some, too stunned to react right away, and it’s enough for Loki to shove Thor off and scramble back to the post where he’d been chained.

“Kill me,” he says again, quietly now.

“N-no, Loki.” The idea is suddenly terrifying. Abhorring. And he knows right then that he’d never be able to do it. Failure.

Loki is drawn tight as a bowstring across from him, ready to flee, ready to lash out. His eyes are wide and the line of his jaw trembles once. Just once.

Thor realizes then that he has no idea who Loki is. Where he’s willing to go. To do.

Loki’s lips curl upward just barely.

Thor has no idea at all.

Blood rushes like lightning through his veins and his joints throb. Loki is a valiant mess of blood and fury and terror before him and an ache pulses through him from the sight.

His stomach is an equal knotted mess, however, and he wants an explanation.

“You’re hurt.”

Loki turns halfway, away from him, and Thor sees him eye the staircase.

A decision is weighed, made in the delicate span of a heavy moment, and Thor has no way of knowing what it is.

But Loki turns back to him and says, so quiet, “I bent wrong, the stitches opened.”

“Why were you bending so drastically?”

Loki’s jaw juts forth and Thor knows he won’t get an answer for all his wondering.

But Loki allows it when Thor’s hand lingers over his side, the ripple of his ribs, as he pushes the shirt up and out of the way, and he has to wonder.

Does Loki wake from panicked dreams too?

Does Loki wonder?

When he returns with new bandages, Loki has his side to him, waiting, refusing to indulge him whatever it was he would see in his face.

\--

Loki, to Thor’s surprise, obeys.

The jug of water is nearly empty by the end of the next day and Loki has eaten every meal Thor brings him. Though he does not eat the pasta salad he brought so Thor files that preference away for later. Thor doesn’t like the store-bought shit either.

He cleans the pails while Loki bathes, and Loki hums while he scrubs himself down. It was the flicker of a note before Thor whips his head around and sees Loki catch himself. He turns his head away and douses himself with the hose.

He seems to take a great deal longer than he normally does. It’s only when the water shuts off that Thor turns to hand Loki his clothes and sees that Loki has not yet risen from the basin.

“Is it your side?” There hadn’t been any new bleeding.

“No,” Loki says, after a moment. He stares straight ahead, and almost sheepishly glances to where Thor holds his clothes outstretched.

“The stitches have not come undone, or?” Thor begins to move forward but Loki raises his shoulder, his thigh, shielding himself and silently commanding Thor to stop.

“No, no. I—” He clears his throat. “I would have a moment.”

Thor narrows his eyes, about to protest but then it occurs to him. Loki’s face is pale save for the slight flush to his cheeks.

“Oh.” And he feels his own face heat. Thor sets the clothes on the chair, not wanting to set them on the floor, and shuffles back a step.

Thor eyes the staircase, and Loki naked in the tub, cheeks hollowed from where he’s surely biting his own cheek.

“I will be outside the door.” He doesn’t know if it’s the best course of action, but his face is warm and his head feels too heavy for his shoulders.

He can just make out the sounds Loki makes, forehead pressed to the door. His skin prickles and feels too hot, stretched too thin. He locks the door and decides to let Loki have the basement to himself for the night.

Thor’s not sure what he’d do if he went back down those steps.


	2. Chapter 2

When Thor ventures into the basement the next morning, he steps quietly.

Loki is asleep on the mattress, facing away from him. He’s dressed in Thor’s pants and has his too-large shirt draped over his side, the bandage peeking out white and rectangular. The stain of blood is light. He notices the basin is upturned, over the drain in the far corner. Loki cleaned it out.

Thor sets down the tray of food as quietly as he can and goes back upstairs.

Loki turns to see just as Thor locks the door.

\--

When he comes to collect the tray, Loki is sitting cross-legged, still shirtless, and watches as Thor does nothing to hide his smile at the sight of an empty plate of food.

When Thor is about to question it, Loki only shrugs. Thor sets down another jug of fresh water and watches as Loki toys with his hands.

“I do not enjoy chaining you up.”

“On that, we can agree.” Green slide to blue and Thor swallows.

Thor braces himself, then takes a step forward, the keys weighing heavy in his pocket. The cuffs are where they’d left them the night before, attached to only one of Loki’s pale wrists. They clink together when he moves.

When he takes another step, Loki tenses, eyes narrowing. They do not shoot to the door, he does not rise to bolt. He merely tenses, bracing himself for the inevitability of what they’ve both come to know as their reality.

But Thor doesn’t want that. The burn in Loki’s eyes tells him much the same.

So he crouches, and gathers up Loki’s hand to unlock the single cuff. He pockets the thing and remains there, balancing on his heels. They stare at each other.

“Do you,” Thor starts, then clears his throat. This is wrong. “Do you like to read?”

Loki doesn’t answer but his throat bobs as he swallows and he licks his lips through some nameless compunction. Thor nods and straightens.

“I’ll be right back.”

\--

Loki doesn’t speak as he flips through the small pile of books Thor brought him. But he seems interested enough so that Thor thinks he has at least done one thing right.

He remembers the fire and the sight of his men dying around him. But the anger coils into a shard; a quick thing that catches the light of the memory of that first day. And he willfully crushes it. Breaking it within him to reflect a thousand thousand other emotions.

Thor sits, one knee drawn halfway to his chest with an elbow draping over it, and watches Loki thumb through the material. He’s a studious man, Thor realizes. The concentration that is in those green eyes is severe and Thor knows he could sit and watch Loki all day.

The past was the past, and it was not Loki who aimed the weapon at him or his own that day.

Loki’s friends were dead too.

\--

Really, Thor knows it’s only them left. Logically, he knows he won’t be caught. If he let Loki crash through his living room window onto the street and take off running in the nude this very moment, he wouldn’t be caught. No one knew Loki was here. No one was looking for him.

Maybe that’s why it was eating him up so badly. Thor could do this forever, and he knows it too well.

\--

Thor shrugs off his shirt and shifts to his side. The covers are too hot and his head feels too heavy for his neck.

Below him, he hears Loki cough. But it stops as soon as it starts and he knows he’s drinking the water. He thinks Loki coughs because his wound.

Loki’s remained unchained since the bath incident. He doesn’t really know what to call it other than just that; an incident.

Loki hasn’t tried to escape. Thor doesn’t understand that, aside from there being nowhere else to go. He’s alone just as much as Thor is, outside of who he used to be. But he thinks Loki doesn’t know that about him.

Maybe he knew more than he ever let on, and Thor has just been kept in the dark. Like the simplest thing.

He doesn’t have to check as often on Loki as he did before. Before, he’d have to go down and uncuff Loki just to stare at him for half an hour as he refused to drink or eat anything. Then Thor would chain him up again and go about his day. His days weren’t much better. They were filled with routine. The grocery was as close to socializing around large groups of people as he got these days.

Loki spoke more. He counted that amongst the good things.

\--

When he goes to hand Loki the newly refilled jug, he receives instead, two books. Loki is holding his gaze steady above the ridge of their spines.

“I’m surprised you have any books at all. I had you pegged for a brute.”

Thor takes them with a frown. There is a small part of him that allows these flippant slights to sting him, and he hates it. There’s no bearing for it.

“I have books,” Thor says. Loki unscrews the cap and takes a swig, strands of water trailing down his chin. He wipes them away on a shrug of his shoulder. Thor sits beside him, some feet away. Loki lifts one brow but doesn’t say anything. “I may not read many of them, but...”

As Thor picks up a book and palms the cover of it, Loki snorts and takes another swig. The action strikes Thor as familiar, and he’s reminded of someone with a beer. Maybe Loki drank before all this.

“You should read that one,” Loki says after a while. The book Thor is holding is thick, and he wonders why he ever bought it. Image, he thinks. Loki shuffles closer, and drags a finger across the binding. Thor’s fingers go stiff from clenching the withered little book so tightly. “It’s old, and I had to pry it open so I’m guessing you’ve never even—”

The distant ring of his doorbell sounds and then Thor is a ball of static tension. Loki has gone silent, his hand hovering poised over the cover of the book. He meets Thor’s eyes.

“Don’t move,” Thor says.

The bell sounds again and whoever is at his door is growing impatient.

“I could, you know,” Loki says. “I could run right now.”

“You won’t, though.” Thor swallows and it’s all he can do to keep his voice from breaking what little fabled peace they’ve managed to craft between them. “You won’t.”

Loki has no answer for that and then Thor is standing, the book still in hand.

“Please,” Thor says, just once, when he’s at the bottom of the steps. Loki is staring like he’s a fraction away from being angry. But then one brow quirks upward and he seems almost worried.

Thor ascends the steps and he forgets to lock the door behind him.

His hands are shaking too much besides.

\--

The woman at the door is short and wrinkled and smiling and Thor is nearly two feet taller than her. She’s babbling at him faster than he can understand her and only realizes when it’s too late that she’s speaking Spanish.

“Sí estoy de aquí vender fresas. Fresco y la mano escogió esta mañana. ¿Querría comprarlos? ¡Son baratos!”

He has no idea what she’s saying but he’s taking the cardboard box of bright red strawberries even as his eyes dart about his front yard, looking for men in black suits with guns strapped to their sides.

Relief hits him hard but the woman is still going on about whatever it is she’s going on about. He only knows so much Spanish since being transferred to southern California and it doesn’t help he’s in the boonies. No one around he ever knew to teach. The deputy had been helping but—well.

Thor struggles to decipher how much she wants for the glittering fruit, and he ends up just handing her a twenty to get her to leave. She seems happy at least, as she walks back to the small cart she has stationed out front.

Back inside, Thor remembers the unlocked door and feels his heart pound as he descends the stairs. He rounds the small corner and his heart nearly stops.

Loki is still here, standing now, leaning back against the beam that once trapped him.

Thor walks over and hands Loki the entire box. He seems confused.

“Fucking strawberries?”

Thor can’t help it, he laughs. He laughs and Loki regards him like he’s gone thoroughly out of his mind. His lip quirks though, at the end of it, and Thor doesn’t care that he’s grinning like a fool. He leans against the other side of the beam.

“Fucking strawberries,” Thor breathes.

Loki’s laugh is light but there, and enough to start Thor up again.

It’s a sound he’s never heard, but knows that he likes.

\--

Thor brings Loki three pillows and two blankets. He also brings down a small fold away table and some more books. Loki has already stacked the ones Thor first brought in a neat pile, finished within a week. Thor knows he’s going to need to take a drive to the nearest library.

He turns away, going back to the landing at the top of the stairs and Loki makes to settle himself in for the remainder of the day, fingering the new reading material with a bland stare. But he shifts to sitting when Thor comes back down, six pack in hand.

“Beer?”

“The good stuff.” Thor pops off the lid of one with the metal of the church key and hands it to Loki, who takes it just when Thor worries he won’t.

He snorts. “Budweiser. Figures.” But Loki drinks it anyway. The bottle is drained before Thor is even halfway through his.

“So you do drink?” Thor asks, risking the conversation. He doesn’t know why he’s doing this. Why he’s trying. Only that he knows that it feels more on the side of right than he’s been in a very long time.

Loki smirks around the rim of the bottle. “One can only drink so much water. My piss is clearer than Fiji.”

Thor snorts, knowing the truth of it.“It doesn’t help the cough?”

Loki throws him a sharp look but Thor doesn’t shy away from it. He wants to know.

“Perhaps it is a separate thing.” Another swig. He waves a finger between them. A long silence passes.

Finally, “Why this? Want to get to know the prisoner? Your little captive?”

Thor’s ears burn, and his heart sets to thundering. The bottle nearly slips where he holds it. “What?”

Loki barks a single, dry laugh. “Playing with your toy. You want to know how I work. Like your little police interrogations didn’t do that already.” He locks Thor with a bright, righteous glare. “Didn’t work so well, right? Got nothing on me. So you went down other routes. To them.” Loki finishes off the second bottle and starts on another one, ripping the cap off with a deft, practiced twist of his fingers. The church key between them, untouched.

Thor wonders if Loki is drunk. After so little.

“Attracted too much attention? Brought down a little too much heat? Isn’t that what it’s called? _Heat_.” The word rolls oh his tongue and Thor has to bite his lip from replying. This is the most he’s ever heard Loki speak and he isn’t about to interrupt.

“Goddamn fools, all of you. Burning for a couple pounds of drugs. Five miles. Just five miles would’ve been all you needed. Look at us now. Look at where it’s brought us. Dead and living all at once. That’s us.” Loki swings his head back against the beam and swallows until the bottle is empty. It lolls in his grasp. “Five miles. Just five miles south of a border you didn’t want to cross. It would’ve saved the lives of your men. Would’ve kept _them_ off my trail. Off your men’s heads.”

Loki brings the bottle up and throws it crashing against the wall across from them, glass shattering everywhere.

He’s yelling. “Five miles and we wouldn’t be here! I wouldn’t be here! Trapped in the basement of some disgraced _cop_ who can’t even stick to being an asshole!”

“I wanted to go. I wanted to cross and take out the dealer where they started, but the risk was too high. The odds said we’d die anyway.” Thor feels an old frustration boil up in his chest, one he thought was forever finished. “My orders—”

“To hell with your what your orders were,” Loki spits. “My people came gunning for your heads. You got too close. You turned them against me.”

“No. You came to us—”

“They put a bullet in my side and one in your leg, they almost blew off your damn hand! They drenched me in gasoline, called me a traitor. They left us to burn, and now look where its left us!”

“I didn’t want this!” Thor’s voice is a sudden boom that Loki doesn’t expect. “My people died too. I had to bury friends while you were down here, sick and dying.” He waves his arm to the surrounding room.

“Then why?” Loki snarled. “Why bring me here? Why risk it?”

Thor flares his nostrils and says nothing. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know at all.

“Why not let me die? Would’ve been easier, right? Left me to burn where I was? Left me for the fire that was coming for me?” Loki reaches for another beer and repeats the same lightning quick reflex of opening the bottle without the key. Too lucid for such clever fingers.

Loki isn’t drunk.

This had been a long time in coming.

“I wasn’t about to let someone burn to death right in front of me! Even if they are an asshole with murderous friends.”

“Family.” The word stopped Thor short. “They were family.”

Thor lets Loki swallow down the next bottle, watching as Loki rolls his away. His sits three quarters of the way empty, forgotten. Loki stares, watching his roll.

“Did you really want to die?”

Loki remains silent.

Thor weighs his next words for a long time.

“Do you want me to kill you, Loki?”

Loki shuts his eyes when Thor says his name, and the curve of lips he gives makes Thor’s chest throb. He rolls his neck and opens his eyes again, meeting Thor’s. The immediacy of the moment burned from him, but the anger not lacking in the slightest. Only changed for the tired, trained thing it had become.

Thor knew that tiredness well.

“Either kill me or fuck me. In the end, that’s really all you can do.”

Loki chucks the bottle lazily, but all it does is clink dully along the floor, refusing to break.

\--

Loki’s voice haunts him the entire drive to the library, while he’s browsing titles, when he’s in line to check them out, and all the way home.

_Either kill me or fuck me_.

Thor prefers one to the other, and the manner of _how much_ he prefers it frightens him.

He’s wandered back into the realm of the wrong.

But he has to wonder, had he ever left?

\--

Thor hasn’t the stomach to even look at Loki until early evening. He’d returned early in the morning, and the pile of books he’d gotten sit on his dining room table, unmoved.

Loki has been silent all day.

Thor tries sitting down and watching a movie twice, before just getting up and pacing from his bedroom to the kitchen. But the bedroom makes him think of other things and the kitchen just reminds him that he hasn’t brought Loki food all day.

It’s just past seven when he finally wanders down, books stacked carefully under one arm and a bowl of stir fry in his free hand.

Loki is doing crunches. Knees drawn to his chest with his elbows drawn tight. Thor wonders how he can stand it with his side the way it is. The bandage is still stained a pinkish red most days.

He falters when Thor enters and he just lies there, knees bent and arms beside him. He brings one up to cradle his head.

“Nice of you to visit. I heard hours varied but...” He trails off when Thor doesn’t rise to the jibe.

The food is set down a few feet away, the books tumbling in a mess beside it. Thor nearly bends to right them, but thinks better of it.

Thor grunts his departure, not bothering to lock the door.

The key he sets on the floor right in front and he walks to his room, shutting the door.

Let Loki run if he wants.

Better to let the temptation run its course, rather than find out how far he’s willing to chase it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just uploading a chapter a day of what I have already written. Once I get caught up to where I've written currently, the updates will be a little slower.

Loki is sitting on his couch, beer in hand, flipping through channels on the television he never uses anymore.

The sight is more than a little disorienting, and Thor feels naked where he stands in the hallway, halfway between the kitchen and the open doorway to the basement shirtless and in plaid cotton pants.

Loki has a plate of bacon in front of him and Thor wonders how he managed to cook it without waking him.

Loki spares him a quick glance, letting his ever observing eyes slide over his bare chest and stomach, then back to his face. He turns back to his movie and offers nothing in way of answer to Thor’s unasked question. The curtains, at least, are drawn. He still doesn’t want the neighbors to know.

Like his neighbors are any closer than a mile apart and anything other than apartments chewed through with rats and trailers built around meth labs. Still, you never really _knew_ who was watching.

“Why?” Thor asks, voice still sleep-fogged. He clears his throat, tries to move but can’t.

Loki shrugs, chews and swallows a piece of bacon. “I have nothing else to do.”

How far would he be willing to chase?

Thor hasn’t been able to test his theories.

\--

The afternoons are warming up, and soon enough Thor finds he’s waking to clinging sheets and in need of a cold shower. Not for any other reason than it’s too damn hot. There’s a small desert between him and the nearest city that’s large enough to be qualified as civilization and he wants ice. Buckets of it. Short of summoning a hail storm, he was out of luck. Some nights he heard thunder boom, and though he slept easier for it, a nameless comfort since childhood, it only meant the humidity was rising.

Loki seems to not mind it so much. Thor has plenty of baggy tanks lying around and since their unspoken agreement of—limited—freedom, Loki has taken to collecting them. Thor knows he must miss clothes that fit, somewhere inside him. But he seems used to how they hang off his lean form. The skin of his chest and the ridge of his ribs show through when he moves about. The bandage is smaller now, but it still opens occasionally. Thor has had to help him dress it twice since he left the basement.

Loki sleeps on his couch now. It smells like him.

Sometimes he catches Loki staring out the curtained window, barely able to make out the lines of the sparse street and life just beyond. He misses the sunlight, Thor thinks. Misses the outside.

But then he’ll crouch in front of Thor’s meager bookcase for hours, just flipping through things. Thor has a lot of travel guides, a lot of maps. Being transferred had become a habit for him, not because he wasn’t good as a cop, but because he liked travelling. He liked helping different people in different places. He’d been in Michigan for a while before this, and had grumbled for weeks over having to replace a closet full of coats and jeans and gloves with a closet full of tank tops and shorts. The one thing California did have was surfing. An hour drive from where he was stationed, but it was worth it. He has a few things on surfing too, and Loki flips through them just as casually as he does the others.

Thor wonders to himself if Loki likes sports. If he likes traveling. He wonders about the scar along his jaw. How he’d gotten it.

He wonders about Loki’s family.

Thor knows next to nothing about Loki. When they initially brought him in for questioning it had been because one guy had sniffed out a lead on a drug route. Loki felt threatened, though that was hard for Thor to believe now. Loki seemed like he enjoyed the torment of the maybe, the stress of the moment. Loki adapted, and Thor questions those first meetings as much as questions everything else these days.

The first time Thor met Loki had been in an interrogation room, and Loki had deep bags under his eyes like he hadn’t slept. He was the one to tell Thor the name of the guy they were after.

Laufey.

He wonders if Laufey was important to Loki. Just who he had been to Loki.

Loki sits on Thor’s couch today, stretched out and lazy. He reads a book Thor picked up for fifty cents in Ohio one summer a few years back. A shabby little thing with the pages falling out and the title worn off. Loki is halfway through with it.

Thor rises from where he sits at his dining table, flipping through a magazine. It takes a while of rifling through drawers in his kitchen but he eventually finds what he’s looking for.

On his way back he stops behind the couch and drops the pad of paper and a pen on Loki’s stomach. He jolts, eyes snapping wide, the book lowering to his chest. Loki looks affronted.

“Make a list of the books you want, I’m running out of stuff for you to read.”

“I don’t have a list.”

Thor shrugs, walking to the door. It’s just an unsaid _thing_ they have going on. Loki doesn’t leave the house and Thor keeps him busy with food and books. Loki spends most of his time in the shower.

Fingers wrap about his wrist lightly and Thor almost jerks away, startled. Loki isn’t looking at him, eyes still on his little broken book.

But he’s quiet when he says, “Palahniuk.”

“Who?”

Loki squeezes his wrist once then let’s go. He’s smirking as he says, “His writing is clever.”

Thor nods, offering a grunt of acknowledgement as he closes the door after him.

His wrist tingles the whole drive.

\--

The fear of coming home to Loki having taken off has waned in the last two weeks. The first few days they didn’t really talk. Loki just wandered about his house, not going outside. He spent a solid five hours in the bathroom alone and ate nearly half the food in his kitchen just the first day. Thor spends a good portion of his days now thinking of what to buy at the store.

Thor knew it was still wrong on a level. But he was trying. He was trying to be kind.

Still, none of it sat in his gut right, not like it should have. In another life maybe they could have bumped into each by chance at a bar, talked for a few hours, hit it off. Been drinking buddies. Friends.

But Loki was Thor’s prisoner, and Thor his jailer. There was no other life.

\--

The store is empty today, save for a few wandering people. They’re old and they meander amongst the vegetables and Thor finishes his shopping quickly.

He’s taken note of the things Loki likes. He loves bacon. He goes through more fruit than Thor has ever known someone to do, and he eats ice cream like a fiend. Loki enjoys sweets, something that humbles the unconscious stone-like image Thor’s managed to carve of him.

Loki is lazy. But Thor knows he has every reason to be. So he doesn’t mind too much when he finds clothes lying about, or books spread randomly throughout his living room, the kitchen. He’d happily suffer through picking up after Loki than dealing with a knife in his chest when he slept. Loki leaves things everywhere except for Thor’s room. He’s never gone inside. As far as Thor knows.

Thor had gone around collecting books for his next run to the library when he passed by his room. He found one sitting on his bedroom dresser. He had paused in the doorway, heart thudding hard and fast. Then slowly Thor stepped inside, went to his dresser and sifted through the drawers, the closet, looking for anything Loki might have taken.

The only reason he looked was because he had a switchblade in the top drawer of his bedside table, lying atop an old magazine.

But when Thor pulled the handle and glanced inside, it was still there. An unassuming sliver of steel and bolts, the handle painted to look like wood.

Loki left little calling cards everywhere, but here, aside from the book on the corner of his dresser, felt untouched.

When Thor passes by where Loki is, legs stretched out on the low coffee table and crossed at the ankles, he forces a nod. Loki does nothing but watches after him.

Those green eyes follow him everywhere now.

He almost misses the stench.

\--

Loki is chewing an apple with a map in his hands. He sits at the kitchen counter, like a guest rather than a prisoner. Thor is preparing the oven for baking a pizza for later.

Sometimes they eat together. It’s harder now that Thor sees Loki all the time. Before, he had the reprieve of that door. The lock carved through in shining metal and the key that weighed heavy and copper in his pocket. The key he keeps now on a leather cord around his neck, hidden beneath his shirt. Thor hasn’t caught Loki going through his things, but he’s aware it’s a risk.

He’s left the knives in the kitchen where they are. He’s not locked anything away. He knows Loki would have killed him already if he wanted. But still, he worries.

Thor hasn’t the gut to wrestle Loki back down to the basement. To the bloodied mattress stained wide blooms of brown and orange. To the chair at the base of the beam. The metal tub. The hose. The trays of food and sleepless nights and the coughing and just. Just.

The oven beeps and so Thor removes the plastic from the large pizza, cheese bits flying to the counter as he slides it onto the tray. He settles it inside the stove, hating the heat against his already glistening face. The heat hasn’t let up any, and his small home doesn’t have the luxury of air conditioner.

Loki takes another bite of his apple and sets it down. Runs fingers through dark hair. It’s longer than before, and Thor wonders if he wants to tie it up or even cut it, escape the heat if only a little.

Luxury.

He bites the thought down. Closes the oven, leans back against it.

Loki must be keen on when he broods now because he snorts, drawing Thor’s attention.

Pointing to the map, along the band that makes up the Eastern coast, Loki says, “Best pizza I ever had. New York has nothing on it.” Thor’s face must have driven Loki to ask, “Been there?”

A brow lifts, and Thor wonders. He leans over to see where Loki is pointing, and sees he has his finger on Boston. Thor swallows thickly, the memory of that city sitting in his throat.

He’d only been there two months before he was recommended a transfer by several other guys. They didn’t exactly want him out, it wasn’t like that. They didn’t want him to be swallowed up by the city. The crime there was special. He heard Charlestown was even worse, despite it just being a neighborhood and not an actual city. There had been a few close calls in Boston. He had a scar on his left thigh from where a guy got him with a knife.

He was proud of his time there.

And he wants, in that moment, to tell Loki all of it.

But all Thor says is, “Yeah. I’ve been there.”

Loki draws the map closer to himself. There’s a small smirk playing at his mouth and Thor wonders where this  Loki came from. It’s sudden and he can’t reconcile it with the furious creature he’d had to pin down by the neck to keep from killing him. Or himself.

He still has no idea who Loki is.

“Was Laufey your father?” The thought had been on his mind for a while.

Loki goes still, the smirk dropping. Instantly, everything about his posture, his mood, changes. Shifts to something seething and dark and contemplative. Silence. Ash from a charred log. The green of his eyes is glass and Thor knows he’s crossed a line.

But he won’t take it back, make it something it wasn’t. He wants to know. Needs to. He knows the names of some of who had been there that day. Some shared Loki’s dark smattering of wild hair. Some had jealous eyes. But none had carried the arrogance and the anger Loki did. Thor thinks it ironic they be burned for all Loki should have been.

There is a hardened, solid anger there now. Something darker than simple displeasure, annoyance. Easily dismissed things. Thor wishes he hadn’t so carelessly voiced his question. So flippantly.

Perhaps it is what makes Loki want to answer him.

“Yes.”

“I’m, I—” Thor is at a loss for words, but he wants to say something. Anything.

“Don’t you fucking dare.” Loki holds his stare, a lethal, edacious thing any moment. Then, “You know, he didn’t die by fire.”

“How? I saw...”

“He’d been shot before that. His back.”

Loki looks down once more to the map and folds it up. He tucks it away into the pages of a random book next to him.

Thor remembers how Loki had entered the precinct that day just a few short months ago. He was calm. He had answers. That was all the department needed.

Within three weeks, Volstagg had been shot, Fandral had been kidnapped, and Hogun was being transferred for siding with Sif in the hearing on her _harsh misconduct_. Sif had delivered back a rather brutal message, and Thor didn’t blame her for that. The irony had been that Sif was left back at base and the others were gone.

Loki gave them Laufey’s name the next day, to Thor. But Loki never spoke of himself. He was simply ‘a man with a past’, and though Thor had seen hundreds of those, Loki was different. Loki could lie.

Loki enjoyed it.

He enjoyed the chaos he made. Every day they brought someone new down, or declared another warehouse burned or cleaned out, Loki seemed brighter. Sharper. He was a fox, and Thor was the pitt, running after whoever was named next.

Loki had been happy with every head claimed from his family. So why had he given Thor and his people their names? What reason had he?

Something else he was unsure if he wanted to ever know the answer to.

“You didn’t like your family.”

Loki purses his lips, amused. “How could you tell?”

The oven beeps and Thor’s knuckles twitch.

“I only saw him burn for a short while.” Loki takes up his apple again, bites into it. His eyes are dead and the curve of his mouth darkens. “I should have saved the bullets.”

\--

Thor dreams that night of Sif falling beside him, bleeding from her chest.

He wakes, eyes wet, heart pounding.

Sif had died with her eyes open.

There’s a sound continuing around him and for a moment he thinks he’s back there, where Fandral had been brought for a trade, and Loki as the bait, Sif pulling her gun too quick. Thor hears two bullets, feels one rip through his thigh and sees from a distance Fandral drop forward through a burst of red. A cloud of gore. Another shot rings in his ears beside him and Sif has gone red and staring.

There had been an explosion shortly after that, the heat eating at the flesh of his arm and his face. Thor wakes to a rush of terrible, virgin fear tearing his heart to pieces as he sees, again, his friends die all around him.

The sound, whatever it had been, stopped long ago, and Thor realizes he is on the floor, blanket twisted around his legs. He kicks at it and thrashes and pounds the ground. He lets out a long sob.

Thor can’t stop.

Not even when Loki is there, a looming presence. He shivers, once, when Loki’s hand hovers just over the top of his spine. Loki flattens his hand there, silent, kneeling just behind him.

“Thor?” Loki whispers, a hush in the dark.

It’s the first time he’s ever said Thor’s name.

And Thor has no words for what little, shaken breath fills his lungs when Loki curls his thumb, just once along the edge of his hairline. Comforting when Thor deserves nothing.

He thinks there are some other words spoken, but he can’t be sure.

If there were, Loki never speaks of them.

\--

Thor liked it once. Liked having Loki chained to the support beam of his house. Thor, once, had been a happy man.

Thor was once many things.

\--

The days drag on. The heat crawls back down to tolerable, intolerable degree by degree. The nights are colder now. Loki still hogs the bathroom. They watch a movie together silently every now and then. They talk more often, but always of insubstantial, inconsequential things.

Thor never voices his questions.

He doesn’t ask why Loki stays. He doesn’t ask why Loki doesn’t kill him.

Loki hands him a list of new books he wants Thor to pick up, and there’s a small smile there. For Thor. Buried underneath all that Thor has forced upon him since the day he dragged him into his car, escaping that hellfire.

Most of all, Thor never asks what’s keeping Loki here.

Why doesn’t he want to leave?

What is it that’s _keeping_ him from leaving?

\--

Eventually, after eating away at him for the healthier part of two weeks, Thor has to ask. He has to know.

He waits for Loki to leave the bathroom. Thor intends to block his exit. And, when Loki emerges in a towel and hair dripping, steam curling about their ankles, that’s exactly what he does.

Loki scowls. “What is it?”

“I’ve let you stay here and do as you please. You seem perfectly content with it too.” The scowl deepens. “I need to know, Loki.”

“Need to know _what_?” he asks, very slowly. He goes to shrug past Thor, but Thor raises an arm to stop him. Loki’s lip curls.

“How many are left?”

Loki goes calm. “How many what? You aren’t that skilled with grasping or giving details are you.”

Thor frowns, shifting the grip he has on the door. Loki is a defiant presence in front of him. The heat from his shower floods the room and Thor feels his chest start to sweat.

“Your men. Your family.”

“My family is dead.”

“Then how many of their hired thugs are left? Loki, I need to—” Loki tries to push past him this time but Thor presses him back, hand on his chest, stilling him.

Thor pushes just the slightest bit and Loki meets his eyes.

“Will they come for you?”

“So what if they do?” Loki says. He leans forward, pushing back. “They have no idea we’re here, that you even took me.”

“There wasn’t a body for them to find,” Thor says, reminding him.

“If there’s no one coming for you, why should anyone be coming for me?” Loki challenges, dark brows arching. Because he knows Thor doesn’t know his side, his people, and he knows that Thor knows that he doesn’t.

Thor swallowed past the throb in his throat. “Because all my men _are_ dead. You were in my basement already when they hit my department. The precinct’s gone.”

Loki does seem surprised at that. But past his eyes going a little larger than before, he doesn’t say anything. So Thor just tells him, “They blew it up. Burnt it down. Somebody threw a match, our wares took care of the rest.”

“A fire for a fire.” And Loki’s eyes shine with the statement.

Thor bites his cheek until he tastes the coppery swim of blood. “Nobody’s coming for me because the government passed it off as part of the drug feud. Either they think I burned with the rest or they just don’t care. There were no government men at their funerals. I was there.”

Loki takes a moment to pretend to think about the weight of what Thor’s been telling him. “Internal affairs then. Hm, too high caliber. DEA? No, no, too low-key.” A smirk. “Tricky business,” Loki mocks. But he’s right, and that makes Thor angry.

Thor shoves him hard against the bend of the door, frame digging into his shoulders and back. Thor uses what few inches of height he has on Loki to tower over him. He smoothes his palm flat over Loki’s bare chest, ignoring the fact Loki still only has a towel wrapped around his waist.

A warm hand settles on the jut of one hip, a finger edging just under the hem of Thor’s shirt. His chest burns from the heat. Thor raises his other arm, boxing Loki in.

A challenge, that’s what it is.

Loki is staring at his mouth. He inches long fingers under Thor’s shirt to feel along warm skin, and Thor lets out a shrug of hot breath. They’re so close Thor can feel the nervous prickle of their noses and foreheads nearly touching.

A moment passes and then Loki’s eyes raise, and in those eyes there is amusement. “So you chose to fuck me after all.” But his voice is rough. “That’s disappointing. I was rather hoping for the alternative.”

Thor falters just as he’s leaning forward, ruined by Loki’s statement. Reminded by who they are. What they’re doing.

His arms go limp and he shuts his eyes, nearly grimacing when Loki leans close and skims the barest brush of lips across his chin, his cheek, his ear. He’s gone in a moment, and Thor can only just keep from following after him.

He’s still far too angry.

\--

It takes too long for Thor to fall asleep, trying to ignore the sick feeling swimming through his gut and the way his groin is heavy and aching. The way an unspoken sadness settles in his chest and nests there. He ignore it, ignores everything. His head is so full to bursting by the time he does sleep it is like unconsciousness being forced upon him. A punch into the world of his mind.

And they’re bad, his dreams. Like the rest. Disturbed.

There is a grey, thin, loping hound, a terror of the night. Its limbs are elongated and the back half of the creature is bent and higher than the rest of it. Its head slides across the ground, ears sliding through mire, and its eyes are black glowing pits. Everywhere it steps there is shadow clinging to it and Thor feels afraid. Around him, people are running, they’re dying. Because of this ungainly, strange, terrible thing. He can’t save everyone by the end of it.

Thor knows he’s dreaming by the end and he wants to wake up. But he can’t bring himself to.

When he finally does, it’s to a knife pressed to his throat and Loki staring down at him.


	4. Chapter 4

The blade is there, just light enough to be pressed but not heavy enough to cut. Loki’s face is blank and Thor meets his stare evenly. Loki stands beside the bed and Thor realizes too late that it’s his own switchblade held to his throat.

Swallowing once, he asks, “What are you waiting for?”

Loki says nothing, but Thor feels the barest pressure applied.

“You don’t want to die. I know you don’t,” Thor says.

Loki curls his lip, eyes expressing exactly what he thinks of that statement. _How do you know what I want?_ they seem to scream.

Thor doesn’t know Loki. Right?

“Then cut my throat.” Thor leans forward only barely. “You can be out by tomorrow, and they won’t find you.”

“What do you know about them?” Loki finally snarls, a quiet, angry thing.

“You’re afraid, right? That’s why you don’t want to leave here. Why you haven’t killed me.” And Thor knows he’s right. He _knows_.

The blade presses tighter. “Yet.”

Thor’s mouth quivers the shade of a smile. “Yet.”

Loki considers him a long while before letting his gaze slide across the room. Slowly, the anger that was simmering there fades and he’s just staring before long. Thor doesn’t know what he’s thinking.

“Why were you running before? When you came to us and gave up their names, their bases?”

Loki blinks. “Maybe I wanted an end.”

An end to what, Thor wants to ask. But he doesn’t. The knife lessens in its push for his life and he wants to raise to his elbows. But still, he waits.

Loki drags his eyes back to Thor’s. “I could kill you and be out in an hour. Be in Mexico. Or the ocean. I could reach the next state by morning.”

“Maybe drive and get some of your Boston pizza?”

Loki huffs, a sigh underneath the weary laugh. “Maybe.”

The knife hovers now, just above the curve of his throat, and it let’s Thor lift his head a little.

“I’m sorry.”

The knife is back on his throat in an instant and Thor feels only the tingle of skin about to give way. He holds Loki’s eyes, refusing.

“I’m sorry, Loki. For bringing you here. For chaining you up and locking you away. For treating you like an animal.”

A searing tears across the front of his throat and Thor can feel blood bead, cooling in the air. Loki’s free hand comes up to grab the side of his face, holding firm and ready to bring the blade down harder. Thor was a weight; unrelenting, furious resolve. Words were pouring out he’d needed to say for a long, long time.

“I’m sorry for keeping you here.”

Loki narrows his eyes, breathing out his nose in harsh huffs.

Too long.

“But I’m not sorry for saving your life that day.”

“Why should you be sorry?” Loki snaps. Thor can feel thin strands of warmth trail down his neck and he knew it was blood. Loki leans closer to him so that he can feel the scrape of hot breath across his face.

“I panicked that day. I couldn’t leave you to die.” He brings one hand up to grip Loki’s forearm, and Loki readjusts his grip on the switchblade. He was baring his teeth now, eyes switching between Thor’s. Thor squeezes, once. “Not like that.”

Loki’s mirth slips through in a cruel rush. “They’ll do much worse to me when they get here.”

Thor hadn’t expected any different.

“I won’t let them.” And Loki’s eyes are a shining blur of green.

Loki snaps the blade shut and moves to grab the other side of Thor’s face. He leans so close that Thor can see there are tears in his eyes. He brings their foreheads together and Thor can feel the switchblade next to his ear. A tender danger lurking, always. The hand on Loki’s arm moves to his neck to tangle in Loki’s dark hair.

“You should let me cut this tomorrow,” Thor says, voice gone soft.

Because he wants to. Because he wants Loki to be here tomorrow. Thor offers up a weak, hesitant smile, and he thinks Loki understands. Thor swipes his thumb over the edge of his hairline, Loki’s eyes gone wide, brows drawn up like he’s in pain.

Thor sucks in a sharp breath and closes his eyes, trying to convey what he can’t even think. “Loki, I...” He bites his tongue on the words he wants to say. Words with a finality that even Thor isn’t ready to voice.

But that’s all it takes. Loki tilts his jaw so that Thor can feel lips just above his. He leans forward what little space is left between them and Loki sighs with it. As Loki draws for breath and presses close again, Thor moves to take the knife from his hand. He shrugs it across the bed to thud on the floor, and then they are tangling hands in each other’s hair.

Loki leans back when Thor rises to sitting, but he doesn’t pull away. He’s sliding his hands under Thor’s shirt to pull it over his head, dropping it to the floor. Thor shifts so Loki has room on the bed, and then he is sliding in beside him, on his knees.

Loki cradles Thor’s skull as he swings a leg over his thighs, and Thor can hardly keep from pulling Loki to him.

Loki’s tongue is quick across the line of his mouth and Thor meets it easily, licking into Loki’s mouth and sliding across his teeth. Thor’s hands find his waist, and he thinks he grips hard enough to bruise.

Loki’s arm loops around his neck, the other still in his hair. They stay like that for so long, soft and breathy sounds filling the room, that Thor’s mind goes quiet. They’re both breathing hard when Loki stills.

His heart calming, Thor presses a final kiss against his chin, then guides Loki down beside him on the bed.

Loki is just staring at him, green eyes expressionless and muted in the dark. He has both arms loosely wrapped around the back of Thor’s shoulders and Thor still has one hand on his side, inches underneath the loose shirt he wears.

Loki suddenly shuts his eyes, mouth parting on a small breath. He shifts closer until he’s sharing Thor’s air, and the heat is nearly unbearable.

Just at the bend of his jaw, Loki murmurs, “They won’t kill me. Not until after they’ve killed you.”

Thor wonders how they’d do it, whoever they are. Not for the first time does he imagine who’s left of Loki’s side. He knows now what he himself is capable of doing, but he knows nothing of what the others will do. Of what they are.

“It’ll be slow,” Loki says. He shifts closer again, the line of their bodies pressed close.

Thor wraps an arm around his shoulders, the other along his lower back, gathering Loki against him.

“I told you. I won’t let them do anything.”

Loki snorts against his neck and a shiver shakes his spine.

Like the shudder of wind through the trees before a storm.

\--

Loki is still there when he wakes, and it makes Thor’s chest fill with something like warmth. Relief. He’s still asleep, and Thor realizes he’s never seen Loki like this. Not so close.

Up close, Loki has none of the dread, or the annoyance, or the furious hate. His face is smooth, and the trap of his bright eyes is shut from the world, from Thor.

They hadn’t moved much as they slept except that Thor had looped his arm under Loki’s shirt to curl his hand over his shoulder. He can smell the sweat on Loki’s skin, the morning hotter than it had been in days. Thor thinks it’s no wonder his home smells now entirely of Loki, he’s everywhere and he only ever wears Thor’s clothes.

Thor falls back to sleep skirting the idea of taking Loki to get clothes that actually fit.

He dreams of Loki’s face lit in sunlight.

\--

Loki’s sitting at the counter and picking through a bag of crackers when Thor walks by him. Loki’s mouth curves, a sly thing.

They haven’t spoken about the night before. When Thor woke up the second time, Loki was gone and the shower was running. His heart had thundered for too long, panic racking his body. Thor thinks maybe he had another dream, but he can’t be sure.

Loki is still the illusive creature Thor had first dragged into his car, bleeding and burnt. He likes to think he’s getting to know him, but if he were honest with himself, he still has no clue when it comes to the stranger sharing his home.

“Thor,” he says. Thor startles slightly to hear his name from the man. So rare.

He bites the inside of his cheek, wanting to ask Loki to come out with him. Not for lack of trying, because he’d been planning to ask the entire morning. But now when faced with the task he found his mind plagued with the usual worries.

What if someone saw them together? What if someone recognized Loki? What if Thor ran into someone he knew?

What would they do if _they_ showed up?

What did _they_ even look like? Thor didn’t know.

Endless worries.

Loki sat there, staring at Thor, waiting for whatever it was he had to say. He didn’t look angry or hateful, he was just _Loki_.

So Thor pulls his keys from his pocket. “You need some clothes.” _And sunlight_.

At first, Loki seems confused. It’s only when Thor turns halfway to the door and meets his eyes that Loki finally gets it.

He’s off his seat and standing before Thor can process it.

When he passes by Thor, there’s a light drag of fingers across his stomach and Loki is smiling.

\--

Thor goes first, feeling a fool for looking around his street for any people walking around before getting in his car. Loki saunters over and slides in the passenger seat like it’s the simplest thing. Maybe it is for him.

Thor is all tense nerve and muscle and pinched eyes as he drives the thirty minutes it takes to the nearest town. Loki watches the world glance by with the window rolled down. It’s too loud with the wind roaring through the car to talk, even if Thor could think of anything he wanted to say.

It’s a difficult thing to keep his eyes completely on the road as he drives. Thor can’t keep from sneaking looks at how Loki has his eyes closed, head leaned slightly to the side, just enough to be swarmed by the wind. His hair flies everywhere and Thor sees an unmistakable peace descend upon him. The light catches his hair and makes it shine a dark, golden brown and he has his hand over the sill, pressed somewhere along the outside of the door.

Loki looks happy.

It makes Thor’s mouth go dry.

\--

Loki acts like he’s not been holed up in Thor’s small house for the last four months. He acts like they’ve done this every day, exchanging easy glances and allowing Thor the luxury of hearing his own name from his clever tongue. Loki is good at pretending.

Loki is a gifted liar.

Thor hates how his heart ricochets behind his ribs and how it hurts. No matter how much he rubs at his chest, the nerves, the panic, the _fear_ —so foreign to him—won’t go away.

Loki turns to see if Thor is still following him, stops when he sees the concentration on his face and the fingers pressed to his sternum. He takes two steps and he’s right there in front of him, staring at him. Thor grimaces.

Loki takes up his worrying fingers. “They won’t burn down a store with locals inside.”

“But cops are free game?”

Loki squeezes his hand once and drags it to Thor’s side, releasing it again. Loki runs fingers through his hair. “Police are different. They’re a threat.”

“I’m a threat?”

Loki stops and drags his eyes back to Thor’s. But Thor won’t look away because he still has doubts. Free falling fears. Like reaching for a ledge in the dark.

“I wasn’t lying. What I said last night.”

“I know.”

Loki pauses and Thor can see his throat bob. Loki says, “You’ll know when they come.”

Thor draws close as Loki goes back to browsing clothes. The hangers clink as he grabs up shirts and jeans. Thor can still smell him, he’s so close.

“What do they look like?”

Loki snorts. “I don’t know. Some could be thugs, some could be from out of town. There’s no way of knowing. If they send someone I know, they’re fools.”

“Why are they coming” It’s something he’s wanted to ask for a very long time, and somehow there is an intimacy in public, a forced obligation to respond, that there isn’t in private.

Loki tilts his head, tongue quick across his lips. “I was Laufey’s son. You know why.”

“You’re kingpin now?”

Loki laughs, nearly silent. “Please. I told you I wanted an end.” His lips purse and he grows serious. “People were dying. People in his ring. He started getting suspicious, so he returned the favor.”

Thor’s brows rose. This was new information. “Retaliation killings,” he breathes. “Were they stealing his drugs?”

Loki doesn’t blink. “Not that I know.” It’s odd, how he says it.

Loki hands Thor a stack of shirts and walks towards the back of the store, toward rows of shoes. They weave in and out of aisles and dodge carts filled with small children crying for their mothers before finally, Loki stops.

Loki fingers the tags of several boxes before letting his fingers drag off. He pauses, eyes distant, and says, “The game got too hot, I had to get out.”

“What happened, Loki?” And when he doesn’t continue, only swallows and blinks several times, Thor presses, “Please.”

Still looking at the floor, he says, “It took Laufey twenty-two years to reach the top. He killed a lot of people before he even came West.” At Thor’s expression, he adds, “Laufey was from Norway. Did you not know that?” Thor shakes his head no. Loki smirks. “Well, after he came West, he went to South America. Thought it would be good business, with what he’d heard about the drug market and all. Cocaine was getting big. Untapped potential, he would refer to it as.”

“How’d he end up here?”

“He lived in Brazil for a few years, I don’t know exactly how long. He never talked about it. Apparently he almost died there.”

“How?” Thor asks, aware of the blatant curiosity on his face.

Loki turns fully to face him. “Laufey thought he was invincible. And someone in his ring made him bleed.”

“So that’s what his scars were from...” Thor remembers the profile they had on the man. He was a brute, even bigger than Thor was, which was something. Scars had run the length of his face, curling devilishly over his jaw and down his neck. In person, he’d been a giant. “It must have taken time.”

Loki nodded. “I asked my mother once when I was small. She said he’d been taken for three days and then dropped back off, unconscious on their doorstep.” Loki went strangely quiet then. Thor sees something in his eyes, something far away, a memory he’ll never share. “My mother didn’t talk much after he learned she’d told me.”

There is a darkness in his voice and Thor has a few ideas why. But he won’t ever speak them.

“My father was a paranoid man. He moved to Mexico after that, and I was born a few years later. By then, he’d built another ring and had a steady supply vein running in and out of the country. He was smart, but paranoid.”

An elderly man walks by then and they go quiet. Loki pulls two boxes off the shelves, for show, Thor suspects, and tries on a pair of dark boots that go to his ankles. Thor readjusts his grip on the clothes Loki had handed him, sitting beside him on the small shoe bench.

“He started to suspect. If one could betray him, why couldn’t they all? I saw it in spurts when I was a kid, but I didn’t _see_ until I was finishing school.” He moves on to the other pair of boots. They’re higher, and have a military feel about them. Loki keeps them on and goes on.

“First it was ounces. Nothing too big, just a few scuffs here and there. Powder. Dust you wipe off your bookshelf.” He sniffs. “He was louder, he yelled a lot. I noticed guys I’d known since I was a kid just weren’t around anymore. My mother...” Loki swallows, letting the subject hang in the air.

“Loki?”

Loki blinks and looks away, at the floor. “I was playing with him. I wanted to see what would happen.”

Thor touches Loki’s wrist and Loki doesn’t jerk or startle. He angles his face slightly towards Thor and Thor can see the strong line of his nose, the anxious curve of his dark eyebrows.

“It was six months ago he strangled her in front of me. All because I wanted to see. To know.”

Thor feels a weight settle in his stomach, crawling along the sides of his ribs and lungs to melt around his heart and harden like lead. Loki has the same dead, tired look in his eyes as he did when he first stopped talking, in the basement. Thor squeezes his wrist, rubbing his thumb once over the knob of bone there. An apology for everything, an endless string of them.

He wants to kiss him then, but he doesn’t.

Thor thinks he knows the answer before he even puts voice to the question. “Who was taking the drugs, Loki?”

Loki sniffs again, fast, and stands. He won’t look at Thor. He grabs half of what he’d originally handed to Thor and keeps the boots on, kicking his old shoes under the bench. He rips off the tag and hands it over to Thor.

\--

It’s only once they’re outside and Thor’s wallet is significantly lighter that Loki speaks again.

“You never asked me who scarred him.”

“I assumed he’d just had the guy killed?”

“He did. But before that, he took away the man’s face, so no one would know who it was when they dug him out of wherever they’d thrown the body.” Loki speaks like it’s normal, like all of this is normal. “Do you know who it was?”

Thor leans against the side of his car, turned towards Loki, who stands much the same, fingers hooking in the handle of door. Thor frowns, shaking his head slightly.

“His first son. Flew over with him from Norway. His name was Helblindi.”

Thor felt like he needed to think too many things then, but all he could focus on was that Loki had a brother, _had_ a brother. Because of his father.

What sort of life must it have been, living under the roof of a monster like Laufey.

Loki juts his jaw for Thor to see the length of the scar that curves just beneath it. The one that had been driving Thor mad with curiosity since he first noticed it. Loki’s thumb passes along it, and there is a wry look of something ancient and bitter in his eyes.

“Laufey called them ritual. Grabbed me when I was a boy and cut me. Said it was for my brother, my mother. An eye for an eye.” He breathes deep. “The brother I never knew tried to kill him and died for it. My mother tried telling me the truth and she suffered. I killed my father. I succeeded. Now whoever’s left isn’t looking for me to reclaim my seat on his throne of filth, they’re looking to stick my head on a pike. Eye for an eye.”

Loki turns away, scratching at his chin like he didn’t just say all those things. And it’s all Thor can do to keep from pushing Loki into the car right then and driving away. Far, far away. That foreign, unnamable fear bubbling up inside him.

“You don’t know these people, Thor,” Loki murmurs, opening the door and climbing into the seat. Thor fights to steady his breathing.

There is a ledge apart from him and he is reaching, with Loki balancing in the dark.


	5. Chapter 5

Loki, it turns out, is a fan of tight jeans and dark colors. Thor notices he wears a lot of green.

He stills wears Thor’s shirts every now and again.

\--

Thor is shampooing his hair when he hears the curtain pull back, the rings a metallic scrape that startles him into almost slipping.

Loki is naked and stepping inside and has his mouth on Thor’s neck before Thor can even stutter out the question of _what are you doing_. Loki presses close, pushing him back against the tiled wall until the beat of water is on him, and he’s hard against Thor’s thigh.

Thor can’t breathe, so he sucks in a shattered breath and lets out a shaky hitch on Loki’s name.

Loki doesn’t speak, but he’s letting loose harsh breaths and it has Thor gripping his hips and pulling their groins together, rutting. He has one hand in Loki’s hair and can’t stop saying his name.

“Loki—”

Loki jerks forward, leaving Thor’s neck to place a vicious bite at his jaw. “Quiet.”

Loki has a hand wrapped around Thor, stroking hard and fast and Thor feels his knees shake. Soap is running down his face and back and his eyes are burning as he comes far too quickly to not be embarrassing.

Loki licks at his neck, leaving gentle respite in place of the damage he’d sucked and bitten into Thor’s skin moments before. His hand moves over Thor’s thighs after, fingers lowering and searching, trailing where Thor knew, somewhere in the back of his foggy mind, that he didn’t particularly want them to be. But that’s all he does, wandering Thor’s backside with slow movements.

Thor angles his head to catch his lips, but Loki pulls back, the warmth of his skin gone. He meets Thor’s eyes steadily and then steps out, leaving after grabbing a towel.

Thor is half inclined to follow, but he needs to rinse the soap from his hair. And there is a bone-deep tiredness, relief, flooding through his limbs that makes him want to fall asleep right there in the shower.

The choice is made irrelevant though, when he leaves the bathroom only to see Loki on his bed, watching with bright, expectant eyes.

\--

Thor lies between Loki’s spread thighs, hands placed steady at his hips, pulling him down, tongue and teeth grazing wet trails over the skin of his stomach. He avoids touching the pink line of where his wound had been. Thor licks everywhere, sucks Loki down as much as he is able. Water drips down Loki’s thighs and waist where Thor’s still-wet hair drags over his skin.

Loki writhes, hands tight and unforgiving as they push Thor on, giving no thought to the state of his throat.

Thor ignores the bitter tang of salt painting his tongue; focuses instead on the sweat of Loki’s skin, the brush of hair at his nose, and the throaty groans Loki offers up, and takes Loki down, again and again.

The ache of arousal claws where his thighs meet, but he ignores it. Buries his face deeper, sucks harder, hums against Loki so he feels everything. Loki cries out and Thor glories in hearing the sounds he makes.

This is for Loki.

Like it’s an apology.

Loki spills, loud and hot and searing, and doesn’t let Thor come up for air until after his shallow thrusts abate. His eyes are teary when he pulls back, as Loki rubs his thumbs soft behind Thor’s ears. Loki lets out a pleased hum.

Thor feels to speak now would ruin the moment. So he settles for resting his cheek on Loki’s thigh, watching his face as he catches his breath and gathers himself.

Maybe, Thor thinks, it’s like an apology because it is one.

\--

Loki allows it when Thor settles his weight behind him, one arm under his neck, the other over his waist. It’s too hot to sleep with the covers on so they don’t make a show of moving too much, skin still damp and, in Loki’s case, clammy with sweat. The room smells more like Loki now than the rest of his home combined.

So when Loki allows himself to relax into his arms, finding sleep faster than Thor ever had, he wants to think they’ll be okay.

But, then again, Loki was a gifted liar.

\--

“Have you ever killed anyone, Thor?” Loki asks a few days later.

They’re watching Silence of the Lambs. Thor’s had the movies for years and he was surprised Loki had never seen them. So it went unsaid that they would make a night of it. Thor ordered pizza, and though they had to reheat it after the long drive it tasted good.

It’s easier these days, talking to him. Loki interacts more with Thor than he ever has. It’s addicting.

Loki sleeps in his bed now.

Loki chews on the slice he has perched in one hand, eyes on the screen as the camera lifts to show Hopkins’ face spotted with blood and smiling. The question isn’t unwarranted, though maybe a little odd, considering the nature of the movie.

“Two men.”

Loki looks at him, surprise evident. He takes another bite of pizza.

“One when I was in Boston, actually.” Loki’s eyebrows raise further and it’s like an unsaid request to continue, so Thor does. “He got my leg with a knife when he was going for my stomach.”

“Fortunate he didn’t manage to snag anything else,” Loki says, smirking around another bite. “How?

Thor huffs a gruff chuckle but goes on. The movie drones on in the background, forgotten. “He had tackled me, and the way we landed, his knife in my leg, my gun at his side...” Thor gestures with his hand. The bullet had pierced a lung on entry, stuck on bone on the way out.

Loki was watching him intently, like he was expecting him to burst out in a great fit of emotion of something. Thor wasn’t afraid of death, he’d seen plenty of it, and he knew what it felt like to end it. The first time he’d been sick, and couldn’t eat for a week, but there had been exhilaration too. A surge of power. It left him cocky.

He didn’t cry about it.

“The second time,” he went on, sipping at a beer in his hand. “Was in Nevada. Some guy who liked to hoard guns. We’d followed this guy for hours, my partner and I. Driving out into the desert. He sat behind his car door for two hours before he stopped scattering bullets at us.”

Loki finishes off his slice and shifts where he sits, getting comfortable as he listened.

“When he looked around the corner, I shot him and that was that.” Thor takes another swig and wipes his mouth with the backs of his fingers.

“But?”

He swallows thickly.

“I didn’t shoot him in the head, it was the neck. He bled out.”

“Hm.”

“Yeah.”

Silence dragged and they went back to watching the movie. Thor relived the day in Nevada. He did cry that night, only once. But it still sat in his stomach wrong. He no longer felt cocky when he was in the field.

Hannibal was walking away and the credits began rolling before Thor was brought back to himself. Loki was speaking.

“When I shot Laufey, he said my name.”

Thor glances over to see Loki watching his face, like he’d been doing it for a while. He has his hands clasped loose in his lap, and that one eyebrow is raised just enough to make him look concerned, vulnerable. It’s the strangest expression Thor’s seen from him.

He reaches over because they’re close enough and grasps Loki’s wrist, squeezing in what he hopes is comforting. Or something like it. He wonders if Loki had cried, down in that basement. If Loki even believes that he’s sincere.

Loki shrugs.

\--

Sometimes, Thor thinks they’ll be alright. That things are better. That he’s doing well.

Sometimes even he is wrong.

\--

It is in the morning some days later, with Loki’s breath hot against his collar and the nearly painful heat of their chests pressed together, that Thor smells the smoke.

He wakes with a jolt, memories stifling any other sense, depriving him of all. Loki is jerked aside when he bolts upright and Thor feels dread curl like hot, coiled wire in his gut. The stench is thickening and something isn’t quite right with his sight. The heaving breaths he takes fill his lungs too quickly and he chokes, coughing. Loki is already standing, rushing to the door.

Then Loki turns and levels Thor a stare he can’t mistake for anything else but as the warning it is.

Smoke.

A loud thud and Thor hears the distant sound of a car door shutting.

A thousand different thoughts run through his mind and it’s all he can do to keep from swaying in his stride as he heads for the door. Loki crosses quickly to meet him, looking alarmed. Loki reaches for his wrist, silently telling Thor to wait.

“Loki,” Thor starts.

But Loki cuts him off with a harsh twist of his wrist, hissing, “Not yet.”

They stay like that for a while. The tension is like a physical pressure in the room, and Thor worries that he’ll see the lick of flame at the edge of his doorstep.

“Your knife,” Loki whispers.

When Thor just stands there, he gets it himself. He doesn’t bother shutting the small drawer it was shoved away in, only switches it open with a practiced hand. Thor feels his throat tighten.

“I smell smoke but no fire...”

Loki nods where he stands slightly behind him. Thor has his hand poised over the door knob. He watches his knuckles flex for ten silent seconds, waiting, listening, before swinging the door wide.

 Right away Thor sees an abundance of smoke, lost in the foggy murk his living room has become. But there is no crackling of a fire, or the rich smell of anything burning. Just endless, boundless smoke.

From somewhere apart comes Loki’s voice, direct and informative, “It smells stale. Probably a smoke machine.”

Thor goes to the front door and left it open, wafting the smoke out in wide swipes of his arms. He squints through the haze to see Loki standing on his kitchen counter. There was a click and Thor knew he was checking the alarm.

“They removed the batteries.”

Thor glares through it, watching out the front of his door to see if they had left anything behind, but knowing they weren’t that stupid.

“Why would they even bother hauling a portable smoke machine here? Risk us waking up and finding them?”

“They know I’m here, then.” Came Loki’s voice, much closer this time. Thor turns and sees Loki approaching him, similar expression twisting his angled features. “People go to great lengths to instill fear, Thor.”

“Tactics,” he bites out. He was a police officer, _was_. Not anymore. But this sort of stuff—it didn’t happen. Not to him, not in real life. “You see this shit in television, not out here.”

Loki grabs a nearby magazine and helps Thor wave away the smoke in a rare moment of camaraderie. The heat mixes with the movement and lingers in a sheen along the skin of their arms, their necks. Thor watches Loki’s hair stick to the sides of his face, sweating by the end of it.

“They had to get it from somewhere.”

\--

“Will this heat ever end?” Loki voices one day, about a week since the smoke incident.

There had been no other calling cards. Thor kept a vigilant eye on all they did, on where Loki went. After the third day, after nearly following him into the bathroom before catching himself, Loki had hit him lightly on his arm and told him to stop following him around.

It wasn’t so much as tailing his actions rather than looking out for him. Whatever Loki said about them going after Thor first, he still worried for Loki.

How things had changed.

Thor worries, but he’s a little more relaxed now. Now that everything is out in the open. Now that everyone knows where they stand. Or nearly everything, as much as there can be given the time. He doesn’t know how much they have, or how things will turn out, but he wants to enjoy the days he has left with Loki. He wants to spend making them up to him, rather than stalking after him and letting anxiety eat him alive.

All a part of the endless apology.

They’re lazing around today. The heat had ebbed into the eighties, apparently cool by Californian standards. Compared to Michigan, it was still horrendously too hot. Apparently to Loki, the heat did affect him after all. He wonders how Loki could still not be used to it after living here most of his life.

Thor knows he travelled, like him, but he doesn’t know all of where he’s been.

“News said it’s a heat wave. Should be over in a few days.”

“It’ll edge back up to a hundred though, before it’s out.” Loki sighs, the sound carrying the weight of past experience.

Loki toys with the remote in his hands, the television sitting black and silent so as to not fry out in the heat. Thor doesn’t want to risk one of his only entertainments burning out, lest his mind turn to other things.

Loki cannot see him from how he lies on the couch, head on the cushion nearest to where Thor sits in the corner in a recliner. It was some of the only furniture he ever spent good money on, and now he’s wishing he had just done the payment plan for a larger couch, so that he might have Loki’s head in his lap right now. Like it was his right to crave.

They have not truly touched since Loki first invaded his shower. And then right after, when, still dripping wet, Thor went to Loki on his bed and laid his teasing bare to pleasure instead.

Since then, he has not had any disturbing dreams. And though he wakes some mornings heavy and aching between his thighs, Loki has never been close enough to discover it.

It had brought something to a head between the two of them, and now that it was out, Thor had little idea how to approach it again.

The words come before thought. “I never made good on my promise.”

“Hm?” Loki tilts his head a bit, the controller coming to a stop on his stomach.

“I still need to cut your hair,” Thor says.

“Oh,” Loki mutters. Thor can see his gaze dart around, landing somewhere along the far wall, where the smoke alarm sits near the top, new batteries powering it. “Where?”

They end up in the kitchen, Loki sitting with a towel across the back of his shoulders and long hair dripping wet down his back. Thor digs around in his desk for some scissors and by the time he does find them, Loki’s hair is half dry and needs to be soaked through again.

Loki swings his head forth in the sink, letting water soak down his shoulders in thick swaying ropes before they break away to scatter as drops to the tiled floor. He does it with little heed for his clothing, and Thor knows it’s only because it must feel wonderful against the heat.

“How short?”

Loki is quiet for a while, staring at the floor. Then, “Like it was before.”

Thor swallows and nods, knowing Loki doesn’t see it, and brings the blades of the scissors to the edge of his hair. “Okay.”

Loki is reticent the entire time, and closes his eyes when Thor combs the hair in front of his face to get it even, so he doesn’t have to watch Thor stare at him. He’s never done this before, so he takes extra care when making sure his hair is even. Let an uneven haircut not be added to the list of the many wrongs he’s done against Loki.

Loki bounces a knee in something Thor would name impatience, though he can’t be sure. His face is serene enough. He can never tell what Loki is thinking.

His knee stops bouncing when Thor’s leg brushes by, as he walks back around. The knob of his throat bobs once and Thor sees Loki clasp his hands in his lap as Thor continues his work.

The next time Thor passes by, beginning on the other side of his head, he feels Loki’s fingers ghost over his thigh.

When he finishes, Thor allows his fingers to thread through his hair, shortened to the base of his neck, smoothing it back. Loki lets out a silent breath.

When he kneels and kisses Loki, so slowly, so carefully, Loki indulges him for all of a moment before he’s standing and passing him. Thor doesn’t follow, even when he hears the front door open and swing wide.

\--

Loki sits on his front step, dangling the rim of a beer between loose fingers. He sits like that for hours, just watching the street, enjoying the sun setting.

It’s dark soon enough and though Thor has switched between countless things, too anxious for anything else, Loki still sits out there. The light leaves the sky and Thor sees Loki cast in darkness, a wistful, reverent stare never leaving his eyes.

It claws at his heart and it hurts. It hurts.

Thor dreams for the first time in weeks. When he wakes up, his eyes are wet and Loki is not beside him.

\--

There isn’t the time to panic because his phone is ringing. Thor’s digging through his bedside table and answering his cell before he can even think of chasing the sleep from his voice. It feels like he hasn’t slept at all.

“Thor Odinson?”

He throws the blankets off of him and rushes into his living room. He mumbles a yes before he can process who it is on the other line.

Loki is lying asleep on his couch, shirt riding up with a hand on his stomach.

It gives Thor enough respite to realize who it is on the other line. Someone he hasn’t heard from in months.

“Hogun?”

“Am I interrupting something?” Hogun asks, in his blunt sort of way.

Thor’s missed him, but right now, he’s preoccupied by Loki asleep on his couch. His hand lingers above where Loki lies, hovering. He wants to wake him, grab Loki to his chest and just keep him there.

But Hogun is waiting so he says, so quietly, “No. Nothing, it’s...nothing.”

“Good. I have bad news."

\--

**I drew a thing. It's my first official illustration for my own story, so yay personal victory.[NSFW here](http://mrhiddles.tumblr.com/post/53011309529).**


	6. Chapter 6

It’s a week before he sees Loki again.

Thor left a note, expecting to be gone a day. Hogun had said it was urgent, important, that he’d already bought Thor a plane ticket.

He trusted Loki enough to believe he meant it when he said he had nothing else better to do, nowhere else to go. Because that was true. Loki was being hunted before Thor was brought into the mix. Before he brought himself into that mix.

It’s quiet when he slowly opens the front door, and from here to the kitchen, to the closed door of the basement, he sees no sign of Loki. Of life. The room is cold, and clean, and he wonders at it. Panic gripping tight around his already weary heart.

It’s been a difficult week.

Thor just wants to locate Loki, eat some food and sleep for a month. He wants to move. He wants to take Loki with him. He wants to be able to go out his front door without being afraid of finding a fire. Or worse.

Thor wants all this to be over.

He finds Loki under the covers of his bed, black hair a mess. There’s takeout cartons on the end table nearest him and Thor almost snorts at the thought of Loki ordering food from anywhere.

It must be something else. There has to be.

Thor doesn’t know why Loki stays.

But now he just feels tired. Like the skin is slipping from his bones and that sand is caving in beneath his heavy footsteps. The one bag he carries he drops off in the hallway and then he slips off his shoes, his shirt.

He climbs in behind Loki, curling his arm to Loki’s chest and pulls him close enough that he’s sure Loki knows he’s there. Loki, asleep or not, presses back against him, murmuring something. Covers Thor’s hand with his own.

Thor nuzzles against Loki’s neck, burying himself beneath the dark curtain of his hair, and can feel the vibration of his breathing from where he presses his lips to Loki’s neck.

When he inhales, long and deep, all he knows is Loki.

\--

It’s only a few hours later that Thor wakes hard to Loki rutting back against him. He has his face turned up, hand on Thor’s thigh, and is making these little sighs that have Thor kissing his neck before he can even think.

Thor finds Loki hard and grips him, squeezes, through the cotton of his pants.

Loki jerks forward, says, “Thor.”

Thor wants to say he’s sorry, for being gone a week, for just leaving, for kissing him that day, for everything else. But instead he groans, thrusting shallowly against Loki’s backside, sucking bruises along the column of his neck. Loki groans and tightens his hold on Thor’s thigh.

They’re slow about it, and Thor can feel the pressure of it building. He brings his hips up sharp and Loki lets loose a moan that has Thor biting where he sucks. And then it becomes frantic.

Thor tugs Loki around and shifts to lie half on top of him, mouthing at his jaw until he can meet Loki’s lips and tongue with his own. Loki’s hands are in his hair, pulling him close, tearing at his skull when Thor snakes a hand between them and inside Loki’s underwear. He palms Loki, hot in his hand and Loki is jerking his hips, reckless.

Thor remembers the tang of salt on his tongue and he wants to take Loki down, taste him again, make him cry out like he did before. But Loki is unrelenting and Thor can’t tear his mouth away from his for anything.

Loki kicks his pants the rest of the way off and his hands leave Thor’s hair to work on his pants. He slept in his jeans, and Loki makes quick work of tearing the button open and yanking the zipper down.

They lock eyes for the first time in a week, then Loki takes him in hand, smirking.

Thor shifts out of his pants, then kisses Loki into the pillows, curving a thigh between Loki’s knees, spreading his legs apart. Loki is running hands over Thor’s back, rolling his hips up to meet him.

“Now, Thor,” Loki groans when Thor bites his lower lip.

“I don’t have anything,” he says against Loki’s jaw, kissing his way down. Because he’s never done this before, but it’s Loki and he doesn’t entirely care that he hasn’t.

Loki doesn’t pause when he says, “Fingers. Your fingers.”

Thor stills when Loki brings his hand to his mouth, sucking two fingers in, cheeks hollowing. His lips curve where he licks and though Thor feels fire simmer in his gut, all Loki’s smirk does is serve to make him burn.

Without warning, Thor takes his hand from Loki’s mouth and finds where his thighs meet, trails down and through the curve of flesh pushes where Loki wants him. Loki doesn’t breathe, but let’s out a groan when Thor finally presses in a single finger to the knuckle. He does it slow. It must hurt, it must, but Loki is rocking back soon enough and so Thor adds another.

Loki’s hands are iron where they lock around his shoulders, in his hair, and Thor finds home in the curve of his neck, where he can feel his breathing, the way his voice sounds ruined from so little.

“Now,” he breathes.

“Loki—”

“Your cock, damn you,” Loki growls, reaching down and yanking Thor’s hand free.

Loki swings a leg up and rolls them. Thor’s hands automatically go to his waist when Loki grips him tight in one hand, and settles so carefully just above him. Thor watches his ribs ripple as he breathes, and then he is sinking down, taking Thor inside him. It’s all he can do to keep breathing. To keep still.

“Alright?” Thor manages.

Loki shuts his eyes, braces his hands on the swell of Thor’s chest.

“Fuck me,” he says, and then he is moving.

Loki is heat, close and tight, and Thor tries to go slow. But Loki isn’t having it and he squeezes Thor’s chest as he rocks back and forth, mouth open and harsh breaths flowing out and heating Thor’s face. So Thor meets him, thrust for thrust and soon his mouth is dry and his vision is hazy, and all he can see is Loki. Thor drives into him until it hurts, and he doesn’t know how Loki can take it like he is. But it’s obvious he enjoys it in the way his arousal curves upward, flushed red, and Thor wishes he could bend forward enough to taste.

It’s startling, just then, how much he _wants_.

Thor flips them over when Loki’s arms begin to shake, and when he presses close, the line of their bodies touching, Loki wraps his arms tight about his shoulders, his neck, sounds pouring out of him. Thor can’t even recognize his own in the rush of it all.

“Loki,” he groans out, again and again.

Loki holds tighter and thrusts against the sweat-slick curve of Thor’s stomach until he’s spilling between them with something close to a shout. It only takes Thor another few moments before he tries to pull out, a warning. But Loki traps him with his legs, so Thor moans low into the skin of his neck as the heat finally bursts and rushes through him.

Loki hums on his name.

\--

“A week,” Loki says when he returns from the bathroom. He hands Thor a rag to wipe himself off.

Reality is beginning to seep back in through the careful cracks Thor had managed to create overnight. With sleep and sex and Loki. Loki.

“I know.”

Fingers curl over his wrist when Loki settles in beside him.

He knows Loki won’t ask because he rarely does. But he doesn’t think it’s for lack of caring. Even though Loki has no reason to care. Mostly, he can’t tell.

“I was in Nevada. I hadn’t meant to be gone a week, Loki.”

“I saw,” Loki affirms, referring to the note he’d left. A poor attempt at an excuse on Thor’s part. As an explanation.

But Loki doesn’t seem angry with him for it. Loki’s fingers are resting against the span of his palm when he says, “A friend almost died.”

“How?” Loki asks, because he’s blunt when he wants to be and Thor likes that about him.

“Shot and in the ICU for three days before he finally stabilized...I didn’t stay in the hospital long. I just stayed in a motel and slept.” Thor shrugs because he feels like he can’t find the words and Loki’s touch is thin where it curves along his forearm, like trailing stone.

Hogun, through the ever growing grapevine of recommendations, had been transferred right out of California and up to Nevada. To a precinct Thor had once worked at. It had been a year-long stint and he had met some good people up there.

Like Steve and Bucky. Steve would take a shot for you if he could, and from what Hogun had told him of a bank robbery gone foot chase, that’s exactly what had happened. Thor had never seen Bucky so upset.

Thor stayed the extra few days because right then, he didn’t want to think, he didn’t want to speak. He just wanted to lie in bed and eat and lose some money in Las Vegas before facing Loki and the reality he’d found himself in.

“People die.”And it’s different, the way he says it. Thor doesn’t like it.

“How many people have you killed, Loki?” Thor asks, very quietly. His voice comes out rougher than he’d intended, and his throat burns.

Loki’s mouth is a quick smile, and the way he tilts his head and laughs reminds Thor of a stag before a fight. His sigh toward the end is an ominous thing.

“I told you already.”

_When I shot Laufey, he said my name._

Thor feels a coil of dread lay along the bowl of his stomach and his skin prickles where Loki has a hold on him.

\--

In his dream, Loki wears a crown of antlers that stab through stars and he is on fire.

\--

Loki kisses him awake. Chases his dreams away with the sway of his tongue and the gentle pressure of his hands.

Thor rolls on top of him, a lazy thing, and greets him touch for touch.

When Thor slides into him, Loki doesn’t stop saying his name.

\--

They lie together before dawn, light stretching slow and thin over the sky. It was a silent agreement in both their parts to forgo sleep. Thor feels morning creep over his senses and revels in the peace of it.

Loki is on his back, hands clasped atop the ridge of his ribs with Thor’s finger trailing slow over his scar. It’s thin now, only slightly pink and the mark Thor had sucked into the skin just beneath it hours earlier is stark next to it. Violence mirroring lust.

Loki lays a hand over his to still him. Thor meets his eyes.

“Let’s go to the beach tomorrow,” Thor says without really thinking.

There’s something lingering in the air between them. Some presence looming and Thor wants to be rid of it.

Loki huffs. “And do what?”

Thor presses a kiss to his collar, easy, so easy. He wonders how it had happened, when. Some twisted reverse Stockholm syndrome, maybe. But then he wouldn’t have bothered in the first place to rescue Loki from dying that day. He had been a caring person, once. Maybe there was some of that person he could still salvage.

“Swim, surf, I don’t know.”

“You _would_ surf,” Loki says on a smirk.

Thor rubs a circle into Loki’s hip, gaze drifting. “It’ll be fun, yeah?”

Loki is silent for a long while but finally, he says, “Sure.”

When Thor looks to catch Loki’s eyes, he sees a distance there. But Loki is Loki and he often gazes where Thor feels guilty to seek after.

\--

“You’re not going to swim?”

All he receives in reply is a disbelieving glare. Loki is situated under an umbrella on one of Thor’s large towels, sand dusting up to his knees. Thor has already gone into the water twice, coming back periodically to try and convince Loki the ocean will not swallow him up. He owes it for the silent drive there.

It is supposed to be relaxing.

“We’ve been here only a few hours and already you are tanner than when we left.” Loki makes a face, like it’s unnatural.

“You would too if you would only let the sun reach you.”

Thor lays down next to him, hands on his stomach, glad for the shade of the umbrella because he can see Loki’s face more easily. He at least had shed his shirt in the heat.

Loki sips on his soda and rolls his eyes. “I turn pink, that’s as good as you’re going to get.”

Thor snorts. “You would do well with some sun. You’re pale as bone some days.”

Loki shrugs, watching the waves and the people wading out with their boards. The beach isn’t too packed, and Thor thinks Loki likes the fact that it isn’t. “I thought you liked my pale skin, with all the staring you did.”

Thor eyes him carefully, fearing some invisible line had been drawn while he’d been out enjoying the water. Loki never brought up his time spent chained in Thor’s basement. That he would do so publically is beyond him. It is hardly a matter that Loki noticed the staring he had done when he helped him bathe.

He reaches an unassuming hand over to Loki’s hip, just resting there beside him. He nudges gently with a finger until it has Loki looking down at him.

“Loki.” And somehow his voice has gone thick and his throat burns. “You know I—”

Loki offers him a small smile, weak. But it is there all the same. Thor treasures those smiles. Loki watches him a moment longer and then turns back to the water.

“I know,” is all he says.

Thor carefully slides his finger into the pocket of Loki’s shorts, just hanging there. Loki lets out a small chuckle at it but doesn’t protest, only continues sipping at his soda until it’s another empty can beside him.

It’s easier like this, away from his home. Easier to pretend that his friends weren’t dead, that he never used to be a cop, that Loki wasn’t the hunted-after heir to a drug throne. To pretend that they were just two people on a beach enjoying the hours in a day.

To Thor, as he studies the nearly sad, resolute gaze that Loki stares out with, it doesn’t feel long enough.

\--

Another hour and two beers bought from a local mini mart later, Thor finally coerces Loki into the water.

He looked unhappy and ready to stomp back out, content to sit on his towel for the rest of the day, but Thor had grabbed his wrist and led him farther out. It took a few more pulls and tugs and a quick pinch to his lower back before Loki looked ready to gouge out Thor’s eyes. But eventually, they were swimming neck deep.

Thor was used to the ocean, always had been. He was unafraid of what the waves could contain, because he’d swam and surfed those waves. He knew the danger.

He wonders now, following Loki out to a cropping of rock that formed near the shore, how much time Loki has spent in the ocean. He swims confidently and doesn’t stroke like he’s waiting for his hand to be bitten off. Thor is content to follow him, smiling privately to himself the entire time.

Loki finally reaches for the rocky surface, gripping tight and looking at the face of it like he’s debating hauling himself up. He wades there, swiping the hair from his eyes. Thor swims beside him, languid and smooth and right in Loki’s space.

Loki meets his eyes, mouth parted faintly from catching his breath, and then one hand is curving around Thor’s neck.

Thor pulls Loki to him, wrapping his arms around his waist and back, pressing Loki against the rock. Loki’s hips seek his and Thor meets him, heat surrounded by cool sea.

Loki is a writhing, wild thing against him, and Thor doesn’t bother hiding the harsh groans that pour from his throat. Loki’s hands follow the span of his shoulders, his waist, cups him over his shorts and pulls Thor flush against him, sliding his thighs over Thor’s hips.

“I want your mouth on me. I want your tongue in—” Loki cuts himself off as, again, he meets Thor in another close, heavy thrust.

Thor can’t take it, he tugs his own shorts down and then Loki’s and takes them both in a fist.

He feels Loki’s hand shoot up and tangle in his hair, pulling with vicious strength as he cries into the crease of Thor’s shoulder. The muffled sound vibrates through him and he spills over his own hand, beneath the water still slapping against them and the rockface.

Thor continues moving slowly against him, small thrusts that are lazy. Loki is still moving against him as well, content in the way he’s closed his eyes and is resting his cheek along Thor’s. He sighs, nose skimming the smooth line of Loki’s jaw.

“I could have you like this, always.” And though the words are a whisper, Thor feels he’s made a mistake in speaking them.

Loki allows his continued embrace for what it is, and says, “Yes, Thor.” And again on a breath, “ _Yes_.”

\--

Loki has his hand sailing on the wind through the open window as Thor drives them home. Loki’s hair had dried fast, while Thor’s still hung in thick, tangled clumps.

The silence is heavy for a reason Thor cannot name, and it worries at him until finally, Loki speaks.

“What are you going to do, after all this?”

It’s the shadow of words, and they’re nearly lost on the wind. Thor waits a moment to process it before he answers.

He glances over to Loki when he says, “Get some of your Boston pizza, obviously.”

Loki isn’t laughing. “I’m serious, Thor.”

Thor adjusts his grip on the steering wheel and drives a few more miles before gathering the will to answer. It’s not that he doesn’t have the words, it’s because it’s Loki, and he can’t ruin it. He can’t.

“Maybe you can tie me up while I kiss you. How about that?”

The words buzz around on repeat because Loki isn’t answering him, he isn’t doing anything and—

“Pull over,” he says. Commands.

Thor does and then Loki climbs into his lap, all lithe grace. He bites hard and sucks on his lower lip until he has Thor crushing their bodies together, wanting more, always more.

“I think I’d like that very much,” Loki rasps into the shell of his ear.

Thor believes him.

\--

When he pulls up to his home, there is a sleek red mustang parked in his driveway and Thor all but panics.

Loki is wide eyed, green lancing up and across the yard, to the door. Thor shakes his head, a careful, cautious joy rising inside him.

Standing in the shadow of his overhang is Tony Stark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is when the updates start slowing down a little. Also when things start taking a bit of a turn for the worst. Thank you everyone for the feedback so far! I was unsure of how this AU would be received, and to know it's liked by some is more than I could have asked for.


	7. Chapter 7

“Broody over there got a name?” Stark asks, jabbing a thumb back to Thor’s car, where Loki waits. Thor shrugs.

He knows Stark is here for a reason. They never worked together personally, but he came around a lot when Thor had been up in Nevada. This was new, and there was a reason for it. Thor knows it, he knows, but he can’t say exactly what.

“It’s difficult. He’s...he’s Laufey’s son.”

“ _What_? Aiding and abetting, nice. What’s your cut, hm?” Stark smiles, laughing in that easy way of his.

Thor shakes his head, all seriousness. He doesn’t know what he’s playing at. “You came here about Steve, didn’t you? How’s he doing?”

Stark sobered somewhat and squinted out into the sunlight. “Better. He asked after you once he found out you came all the way up there to see him. Guy was in bad shape a for a while.”

“Yeah, I know.” Thor remembers the rush of hospital staff around him, the drips pinched into the skin of his arm, the way his chest was bruised so badly, you could see it if the light hit the thin hospital fabric a certain way.

A car door opens and shuts and Thor sees Loki walking toward them. He eyes Stark on his way inside, before going to the fridge and grabbing a beer.

“Chatty guy. I like him.” Stark quirks a brow and even though he saunters in like he owns the place, Thor can’t help but feel a little happier, despite everything. When Stark had been around in Nevada, it had been fun. He’d been a friend.

But there is a reason, hanging over their heads, and Thor fears it.

Inside, Loki passes Stark, watching him all the while as he walks around the room. He smiles wide at Loki, and Loki frowns, narrowing his eyes. He glances over to Thor, surprised at catching his gaze, and looks to the ground.

Thor can see his throat work as he swallows, and his jaw tenses. It makes Thor uneasy, and when he steps over the threshold he steps lighter for it.

It puts reality a little more in focus, and it makes him uneasy with the truth of the situation.

Because for all the many things he’s done with Loki, he knows Loki doesn’t tell him everything. He doesn’t trust Thor.

Thor doesn’t trust Loki.

\--

“So, what is it that you do?” Loki asks, quiet, expression pinched. Like it hurts to even voice his wonderings to anyone but Thor. Thor almost smiles for it.

“Military,” Thor says just as Stark says, “Weapons production.”

Stark shrugs and sips at his mug of coffee noisily, smacking his lips. Loki glares at him from where he stands in the corner. Thor watches as Stark surveys his home, brows raised, torso twisting in something Thor would call anxious excitement.

He’s curious, and it makes Thor nervous.

“Tony, I’m happy you came to tell me Steve’s doing better. I am.” Thor swallows and his throat works, painful. “But with your work, with what’s been going on,” He levels Stark a stare that he can’t help but meet. “I know it’s not just because of what happened to Steve.”

Stark takes a longer drink of his coffee, smoothing his trimmed goatee once before flitting his gaze to Loki. “A few reasons, actually. Fury may have said a word or two. Nothing too big.”

Loki makes a sound from where he stands, and Thor turns to see him stalk off to the bedroom. He doesn’t return and so Thor turns back to Stark. He’s pursing his lips like it’s amusing.

“He doesn’t like me.”

“Why are you here, Tony?”

The mug is clasped in a steady grip. Stark’s mouth works like he’s thinking of how to say the words, then he’s spitting them out, quick and quiet. Almost shy.

“Fury’s been keeping an eye on this city ever since what happened, well, happened.” He waves his hand in a flourish. “Laufey was a top guy, people noticed, Thor.”

“I didn’t kill him,” is all he says.

Stark blinks once and looks to the ground.

“Nat’s been gone for two months. Clint’s getting worried.” The way he says it, it makes Thor wonder.

“That’s her job though, isn’t it?” Thor asks, letting the new information sink within him. Natasha was never _gone_.

Stark leans forward, lowering his voice from where he sits on the recliner. Thor looks to the bedroom, sees Loki’s shoulder. He’s standing just beside the frame of his door, listening. Stark can’t see him but Thor knows. And good, because he doesn’t want to repeat everything.

“Recon, yeah. Not being inside, not like this. This is the longest she’s been gone, apparently. Clint’s about to storm in himself.”

Thor holds up one hand. “I don’t know what Fury’s doing. I haven’t talked to him since I left Nevada. I never even worked for him.”

Stark stands then, looking down at Thor with a frown. “You helped us once.”

“Not officially,” Thor says, air rushing out his nose. He has Loki and himself to worry about right now. He stands, towering over Stark.

He shrugs again. “I’m just here because Fury was worried.”

“Fury doesn’t worry. I knew him long enough for that.” Thor looks back to where he knows Loki is standing, and he sees his arm move with a swig of his beer.

“Who killed Laufey?” Stark asks, and it brings Thor’s gaze back around to settle heavy on Stark. He holds his stare. “I asked to come. I didn’t want ol’ Eyepatch down here stirring the waters, you know, doing his _thing_.”

“Fury knows, he has access to that information if he wants it. I’m not a cop anymore, you know that.”

“So? You were there. Yeah, we know there was a fire. There was also about two clips stuck in Laufey’s back.”

When Stark lowers his head to drink from his mug, Thor’s eyes slide to his bedroom door. Loki is no longer standing there.

Thor swallows. “It was chaos. The warehouse exploded, after my men were shot, after I was hit in the leg. Almost burnt my hand off. I could hardly hear, my ears were ringing so badly.” Thor licks his lips, brows drawing together as he stares at Stark. “You know what an explosion is like.”

Stark purses his lips, like he’s amused Thor would imply. “Afghanistan was a lot of fun, you know my hobbies.”

“Tony...”

Stark waves his hand at him, turning and walking toward the door. Thor knows he’s said the right thing to deter him, and follows.

He pauses before he reaches for the knob. “I’m glad you’re still here, big guy. But Fury’s getting anxious. Laufey’s kid, _living_ with you?” His eyes go wide and he waves one hand around the room. “I mean, what the hell?”

“They were going to kill him, Tony,” Thor tells him, voice gone quiet.

Stark stills, straightening like he understands in that moment. Maybe he does. Thor doesn’t want to ask.

“You know the situation then, Thor.”

“I do,” Thor says. He tries to tell Stark without saying it; what else did he have?

Because Loki’s people were coming for them. And he and Loki weren’t the only ones who knew.

“Let me know if you catch word of Nat. You still have my number.” The door opens and Stark steps outside, turning wide toward the open front yard.

“Thank you, Tony.”

Stark turns on his heel and squints up at Thor. He smiles a little, crooked, and says, “I’ll let you know when Steve is up and about.”

Thor nods and Stark begins walking away. He watches as he gets in his car, shutting the door loudly before revving the engine and pulling out into the street.

Just before he starts rolling away, Stark pulls down his sunglasses and yells to Thor from the window, “Later, Thundercat!”

Sighing on a chuckle, Thor shuts his front door.

\--

“Thundercat?” Loki asks him when he goes into his bedroom.

Loki is sitting on the edge of his bed, beer bottle empty and hanging from his fingertips. Loki looks tired, exhausted.

Thor makes a face, remembering. “A nickname. Nevada had a lot of bars.”

When he walks up to Loki, crowding the space between his knees and taking the bottle from his hands, Loki lets him. His hands go to the backs of Thor’s thighs as Thor threads his hands through his short hair. He curls it over his fingers, mussing the dark strands.

“They know,” Loki says.

“Yeah,” Thor breathes. “Tony was just clearing some things up.”

Loki presses his mouth to Thor’s stomach through the shirt he wears, mouthing just above his pelvic bone. Thor lets out a breath. Loki breathes and tongues hot, damp air in a line from his hip to his navel, and Thor can’t help but tighten his hold on his skull.

“He knows I killed my father.”

Loki’s hands are trailing up his thighs, and Thor closes his eyes. “Yes.”

“Good.”

Because he wants them to know, Thor thinks. And his hips surge forward when Loki unbuckles his belt and slides his jeans down just enough to mouth at the hair there. He licks at the line of muscle along his groin, and then sucks once, long, hard enough to purple. Loki pulls his jeans down to his thighs, not hesitating in taking Thor in his mouth, not yet hard, and just laving at him with his tongue.

He works Thor to panting before Thor can summon words. “I didn’t hear that—many bullets.”

Loki pauses, a finger ghosting near the curve of his rear before squeezing. “You said it yourself, your ears were ringing.”

Loki swallows him again, and Thor bucks his hips, once, shallow. Loki sucks harder, and it breaks something in him. He pulls dark hair until Loki is sucking in a breath, and pulls him to standing before wrapping his arms around his back, under his arms. He kisses Loki, tasting the salt of himself, and holds him close. Close so that his skin heats and it hurts.

When Loki tangles hands in his hair, Thor falls on top of him on the bed, and just keeps kissing him.

It feels like hours, them staying like that, half-dressed, moving against each other, and sharing harsh, hot breath.

At one point Thor says, “Stay. Stay with me.” He aches.

Loki never answers.

\--

Thor must have woken Loki sometime in the night, because he wakes to Loki’s fingers curled over his wrist. His thumb passes back and forth over the bone and though he’s faced away from Thor, it calms him instantly. Loki cares. In that odd, half sort of way of his. It makes warmth swarm through him.

It reminds Thor of the first time Loki ever said his name.

“What was it?” Loki asks, after Thor’s breathing evens out.

Thor can feel the panicked sweat cooling on his bare chest, and his heart calming the longer Loki is silent. Thor lets the question hang, wondering why Loki cares. Always why.

Loki waits for his answer, and so Thor tells him. “You died.”

Loki turns onto his back, and tilts his head so he can see Thor’s face. Thor tries to pick out each dark fleck of green in his eyes still vibrant even in the dark of his room, but Loki blinks and the moment is lost.

Thor shifts on his side to face him and Loki hums once, nearly silent. His fingers drop from Thor’s wrist and onto the sheets, near Thor’s own.

“I can’t die, Thor. You know that.”

And oh, how confident he is as he says it.

Thor falls back to sleep holding Loki’s hand.

\--

They’re shopping for food.

Loki went with him this time, since they were running low on things they both ate and Thor was tired of having Loki make lists.

Loki surveyed the aisles with an air of boredom, occasionally throwing in an item or two as Thor followed behind him with a cart. It was easy, with quick snatches of conversation that Thor could find no reason to call mundane. Because it was Loki. Loki with his quick fingers and clever stare and fierce tongue. Loki with his clear, piercing green eyes.

“You are staring,” he says as he tosses in a back of rice. He bends to reach something else on a shelf and with the shirt of Thor's he's wearing, Thor can see the lean ridge of his ribs. He grins as he passes by Thor once more, walking back down the hall.

It takes a moment to catch up with him, and when he does Thor says, quietly, “You tell me that a lot.”

“You stare a lot.”

“I cannot help it,” Thor mutters.

Loki looks back at him like Thor just became very curious. An eyebrow arches and he smirks, but there’s none of the usual malice behind it. Thor wants to kiss him, but he won’t. Not in public.

Loki leans closer. “Perhaps you should bathe me as you once did as well.”

Thor stops walking and Loki’s smirk grows as he continues on.

“I touched myself often, thinking of you.”

Thor goes wide-eyed and he warns, “Loki...”

“Would drive myself to coughing, bending over in that chair like I was to reach—”

“ _Loki_.”

Loki nears so that he can speak directly into Thor’s ear, and Thor shivers for it.

“I imagined myself inside of you, with you begging me for disgusting things. I would picture you sucking me off, knelt on the stone floor. I dreamt of you inside me, making me bleed—”

“Loki, please!” He doesn't know why Loki is telling him all this now.

Thor walks ahead, keeping the cart tight in his grip as he pushes it on. He’s nearly hard from a few simple words, and so he tries to focus on anything other than the images Loki’s put so perfectly inside his head.

Loki just laughs as he follows behind him.

\--

It happens in the grocery.

They’d split up because they agreed it would be faster and because Thor didn’t trust himself around what Loki felt he needed to whisper into his ear. In public.

He’s picking through apples when a woman brushes his shoulder.

He turns and sees her, words leaving him.

Bright, ferocious eyes meet his, and she rushes out, “They’re here.”

Thor twists, immediately looking for Loki. He doesn’t see him. There are dozens of people milling about, casually shopping. It’s easy to blend in.

He turns back and sees the sway of wild red hair snap around a corner, and he’s lost sight of her.

Thor wonders if Stark is near, watching the area. If Clint showed up. Even Fury maybe. He doesn’t know, and it sits like a sickness in his stomach.

Thor has just abandoned his cart when a hand closes around high on his arm.

It’s another woman, tall, thin, with blonde hair that reaches her waist. She grins like a viper and Thor feels the hand around his bicep tighten. She’s different, and the suit she’s wearing tells him this is it. They’re here.

He needs to find Loki.

“Please follow me, Thor Odinson.”

\--

He wants to fight, he wants to break her grip, because he can, and find Loki. But he doesn’t know these people, and the risk of causing harm to those around him is too high. Better to fight in the street than in a crowded store.

She leads him beside her, and Thor has a feeling she has a gun strapped somewhere along her side, hiding beneath the small suit jacket she wears. Thor has nothing. Loki has nothing.

Walking slowly, she leads him along to the side of the building, between a strip of cement and wall covered with graffiti.

They stop and all thoughts of a fight leave him almost immediately. He startles when he sees Loki before him, in the middle of two taller men. They’re pale and one has a thick scar along his forehead, but they do not hold Loki back. They’re not restraining him.

“Loki,” he says.

Loki only stares. His mouth is a careful line.

A pain steals across the back of his head and then all goes black.


	8. Chapter 8

Thor wakes in his basement. He doesn’t have to pull at his arms to know they’re cuffed behind his back, the chain looping around the beam. Dread leeches through him and in that moment, he knows. He knows everything.

Loki stands in front of him and he’s still wearing Thor’s shirt.

Thor doesn’t know how long he’s been standing there.

Thor’s head is aching and he wants to tilt his head up. But he can’t even bring himself to look at Loki and so he does not move.

He can hear Loki exhale, nearly silent, and then he’s walking away. He ascends the stairs and then the door closes.

When Thor hears the distinct click of the lock, he knows he’s a fool.

\--

It’s dark when he wakes next, and the irony of his situation is not lost upon him. It would never be, no matter the time. He’s as awake as he was when he first roused in this room, his own basement, to the same chair Loki had been chained to for weeks on end.

Thor remembers the scrape of metal across the floor, the jangle of keys leaving his pocket and the weight of the water jug in his fist.

Loki leaves him none of these things.

He doesn’t see Loki for a long while.

\--

He wonders often if this is how Loki felt, trapped down here. Not knowing if there would be food, or water, or even a bath accessible to him. Thor gave Loki one thing, early on. And he realizes the significance of it only now, when his own throat is dry and his eyes are hurting and his stomach roils with cramps from hunger. Only now that he cannot tell the time of day, or hear upstairs who he _hopes_ is still occupying his home.

He gave Loki routine.

And Thor has been given nothing.

\--

Time rolls by slowly and his bladder is so full it hurts. Thor uses his own spit to wet his lips, but it’s useless with how dry his tongue is.

He pisses himself some hours later, and he yells, loudly.

There’s nothing left now, even his body is betraying him.

But there is at least a focus. A focus he now understands what must have been driving Loki through his time here. Through the nights that Thor drew him against his chest and held him tightly enough to feel the pulse of his heart through his ribs.

Anger is what he’s been left with. Vast, wild anger.

He is angry. At Loki. So angry it pains him and makes his throat ache in a way he hadn’t known since the day he saw Fandral and Sif shot in front of him. Since Loki first said his name.

Thor is angry, but in that anger is confusion. Because Loki spent months with him. They spent months together. Time neither of them can withdraw from their lives. Loki had told him things, had shared _everything_ —

Loki has always been a gifted liar.

\--

Sometime in the night the endless hours are pierced by a single thud. He waits, heart beating so hard in his chest, and the time is the slowest he’s ever suffered through.

There is a creak, the barest edge of a sound, before the basement door, and Thor knows Loki is still here. Or someone else.

Eventually, he will see Loki again. He will have the chance to touch him. To—

To return that focus in kind.

\--

It takes a few days longer before Thor finally is pushed to crying. He sobs, and it feels wonderful and shameful at the same time.

He cries because he still wants to touch Loki. He cries because he wants to hurt Loki.

Thor is still stuck between the familiar pull that once kept him up at night, and he finds he doesn’t like it at all.

Not this time.

\--

“You’re going to starve him,” Amora says three days after he has Thor cuffed to the basement beam. She’s smiling.

He meets her with a solemnity she often flinches from. Today, she only rolls her eyes and walks to the kitchen counter. It’s strange, seeing her sitting where he often sat. Where Thor had served him food, where they’d spoken.

Amora is a harsh presence here, and it feels wrong.

“Let him starve then, for a while. I did,” Loki says, not blinking. He has Thor’s knife in his hand, a solid weight that he once fantasized about in many ways. It’s many uses he could use against Thor.

“You were.” Her grin stretches. “Now look at you, stuffed like a hog. He fed you well.”

He angles his head towards her and wonders at what she is trying to get at. He knows her, but this, for her, is low brow at best.

“Don’t be odd, Amora. He kept me alive, that was enough.”

“I wonder why though,” she says on a thin breath. Her lips close on a purse and she eyes him. Loki thinks she suspects, but he has power here still, and knows she would never openly state what she’s implying. What he thinks she is.

“I told you. He intended to take me to Fury and use me to get to the rest of you.”

“A bargaining chip.” She snorts, like it’s humorous. “You’re such a liar, Loki.”

“Not with everything.” He toys with the hem of his shirt. Of Thor’s shirt. “Not like you.”

Amora frowns and looks down for a quick moment before saying, quietly. “You know, he is a handsome guy.”

Loki can’t keep from stilling. He feels the corner of his mouth tremble, but Amora doesn’t see.

“A shame a body like his was wasted on you. I’ll have to take a look for myself.”

He watches her carefully then. She wouldn’t dare, he thinks.

But she’s smiling and maybe, maybe she would dare.

The knife flicks open and light green eyes snap to his from across the room.

“Guess you’re bringing him his meal then? Or should I?”

\--

The tray strikes the metal flooring with a clang, an apple rolling off and the sandwich that had been on it sliding off the plate. A too familiar jug of water is placed close enough to press alongside his leg.

Loki is standing in front of him.

Thor raises his head, forces himself to. He wants to see Loki’s eyes, wants to see if he’s aware of what he’s doing.

He is stone faced. Mouth a hard line. Eyes cold. He seems angry.

He holds Thor’s switchblade in the grip of his fingers and Thor wonders why. Why now, after everything?

When Loki grabs his face and forces him to meet his eyes, a mirror treatment of what Thor had once done so long ago, he looks away. Anywhere but at Loki, who is wrenching his head from side to side to try and trick his sight to locking with his. His neck hurts and his head is throbbing but Loki’s hands are warm where they press to his jaw, his temples, and it’s a pleasant distraction in spite of it all.

“Thor, please,” Loki says.

It’s broken, nearly silent. But Thor doesn’t relent. He closes his eyes and refuses Loki’s plea.

Loki’s thumb finds its way between his lips and Thor has shame enough to be embarrassed when a sound works its way past his throat. Loki is close enough that Thor can smell the scent of him, heady and familiar and he has the urge again to taste. Taste everything.

But Loki is why he is here. So he closes his teeth around the digit and bites hard enough to make Loki let out a pained huff. He doesn’t move to pull his finger back though, if anything he presses closer. He kneels before him and the hot line of his mouth closes over the curve of his jaw. He feels Loki mouth at his stubble and then his tongue rakes a line to his collar.

“Please,” he says again, against skin.

Thor doesn’t know what he means, no idea at all. He lets Loki’s thumb slip from his teeth and then he is searching for his mouth. Loki meets the kiss, grants him that, and winds a strong fingers through his hair. It feels like an embrace.

“Trust me,” Loki breathes.

Loki stands and shrugs from Thor’s seeking mouth. Thor’s heart races because he needs to know, he _needs_ —

But Loki ignores him, ascending the stairs like nothing occurred.

“Loki!” Thor shouts after him.

The door closes and he sees, hours later, there is a key on the tray.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be a little longer. Definitely looking to be around 30k.


	9. Chapter 9

The night goes on in quiet solitude as it always does. Only now Thor’s heart beats panic quick in behind his ribs and lungs and the pressure makes his sight ache in the darkness. He sees the key, like a light imprint on his mind, just before the lights shut off when Loki closed that door.

It’s dark and Loki has given him a fighting chance.

It is not the key to the cuffs, it is the key to the door.

Thor is strong, the heat a searing presence as the muscles in his arms strain against the constant angle they’ve been forced into. His palms and fingers alternate between burning, throbbing, and numbness, and he feels light headed often enough now that he’s not had water for what he _hopes_ has been less than a few days.

But he knows he’s been here longer than that.

He strains, prepares for the pain of it, and then the metal is tight against his wrists. He holds in the gust of breath that wants free of his lungs.

Thor knows he can break them if he really wanted. The initial links are thin enough and if he kept at it, pushed past the pain, he could deal with the consequence of it later. Loki tried to break them in the beginning. It was why his wrists bled.

Thor thinks of the sun, thinks of Loki’s hair in chaos about the sharp angles of his face, cast in gold from that sun, and he knows he is willing to bleed.

For Loki.

Loki deserves his wrath and he shall have it.

But if Loki is telling the truth, for once, then perhaps his wrath is best channeled to those left. The ones who took them. Him.

He focuses on where he knows the key is, the pull of hunger a deep stab in his gut and the stench of piss ripe and familiar all about him, and he begins. He senses, so many things.

The iron-salt scent of copper and the slow drag of warmth trailing down numb fingers soon joins with all the rest.

\--

“You were down there a long while,” Amora says when he returns.

Thor’s living room is lit with a single lamp, it flickers once and Loki has to blink twice to realize it was not his sight betraying him.

Amora is spread out on the couch, watching him with wide eyes, a mean curve to her full lips. She swings her legs over the arm of it, and Loki wants to shove her off. Wants to hear the sound she’d make as she hit the floor.

But in the far corner, by the door, stands the two from earlier. Loki swallows and only offers up a small smirk in reply.

Amora pouts and he knows he’s being watched by the men in the corner.

“He was obstinate. Refused me feeding him anything so I tossed it down for him. You can go check if you’d like.”

“Time allows for talk, little Loki. You know that.” And she laughs with it, a shrill sound.

“I have nothing else to say to him. The fact he’s trapped in his own home speaks for itself.”

Amora raises to her elbows, but never stops swinging her legs. Loki wants to see her scream.

“All that silver and not even your tongue could think of something to say?”

“I’m only human, Amora.” Loki shrugs, fingering the hem of the shirt he wears. It’s become a habit.

Amora watches the action and her lips stretch to a smile.

“Not exactly your style,” she says.

“The heats been unbearable, I’m sure you’ve noticed.” He’s sure she’s noticed a lot of things. Things he’s curious to know, but cannot outright ask.

“Would have thought you’d run to the nearest dress shop and buy yourself a suit.”

“Who buys a suit in the summer?”

“An asshole. So you obviously.”

He laughs at that, and she seems to relax slightly from it. Good, he thinks.

Loki wonders how Thor is doing, blind in the dark.

Amora startles him out of his thoughts when she says, solemn, “You’ll need one for when the others get here. Dress to impress and all that.”

The others.

Njord, most likely. Hopefully. His kids. Brokk probably. Kvasir, Mimir...So many possibilities.

The angry red lines of the digital clock on the cable box tell him it’s just past eleven at night.

How long will it take?

\--

Sometime past three, while Amora sleeps on the couch and her guard takes the chair, Loki approaches the basement door with a basin filled with soap, towels, and clothes.

The tall one with the scar steps in front of him.

“Move,” Loki says.

“Why are you sneaking down there at three in the morning?”

Loki matches him stare for stare. He’s almost as tall as this one, which being taller is a feat in itself, and the scar is an angry mark of the past that Loki remembers all too well.

“He’s going to stink up the place if he does not bathe.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“You’re right, it’s not.” This throws the man for a moment. He squints at Loki as if he’s studying him. “Not unless you want the place to smell of shit and rot. Let me by. Now.”

“Loki—”

“You’re not to call me that. You’re just a trade, remember? Your own people didn’t even want you.”

“I—”

Loki crowds his space, sneering. “Would you like another scar, Hoenir?”

Hoenir tilts his head forward, then down. Loki passes by into the basement below, closing the door nearly silent behind him. He’s relieved he had not had to deal with the guard, beast as he was.

\--

When the light flickers on, Thor is bleeding. Sweat is visibly dripping down his face and neck. Loki walks to him.

Thor glares and he wants to weave his fingers through the tangled mess of his hair, but not yet. Not yet, Loki tells himself.

He sets the basin down and all that’s inside it and kneels behind Thor. He runs careful fingers just above the bloody, torn mess of Thor’s wrists, and he feels a careful sort of joy rise within him. Loki feels an urge to taste the wash of red he sees but settles for licking his lips and swallowing thickly instead.

He is tired of these mad, craving itches that linger beneath his skin. All revolving around Thor. Foolish, cruel Thor.

“You haven’t eaten your sandwich. I slaved over that in your own kitchen.”

To his surprise, Thor lets out a hoarse laugh. When Loki undoes the cuffs, he is near enough that Thor leans his cheek against Loki’s shoulder, murmurs Loki’s name on a sigh. It’s a weight that sends a warmth through Loki’s chest so he pulls away from it.

Thor’s wrists are torn and it’s clear he’s been pulling at the cuffs since he last came down here. The tray of food and the key remain unmoved. Untouched. The jug of water has been kicked to its side, water still.

Loki grabs the jug and unscrews the cap, hands it to Thor. Thor’s arms are layered in varying stages of dried blood and sweat and he sees them shaking. His fingers find their way to the underside of his forearms, steadying Thor without premise.

Loki curses the action but finds he still wants to touch, feel Thor shaking, despite everything he suffered down here so long ago.

A part of him likes that Thor is down here now, bloodied and covered in his own filth, eyes red and voice hoarse, starving, rotting away. Dying slowly. He could drag this out for months if he wanted.

A larger part of him, the part holding the water to Thor’ lips as he drinks in shaking gulps and spills down the sides of his mouth and neck, doesn’t like it. Doesn’t want to.

Thor pulls away, water sloshing down his front, but his eyes are lidded and he’s mumbling thanks and curses and Loki’s name over and over. He isn’t entirely lucid. Loki thinks the pain leeched into his mind sometime in the night, and he wonders how exactly he’d been when he was sitting there bleeding and silent.

He wonders what Thor thought, in the same place where Loki is now.

Loki brings the food to Thor’s mouth next. His hands still shake and he fears time will waste if he lets Thor struggle on his own. He hadn’t intended to do this. He hadn’t intended to come back down at all.

“So much muscle and you couldn’t even pull some wire apart?” he mocks, but it comes out weak.

Thor frowns around the food he chews.

“Why, Loki?”

“Why what?” Loki asks, even though he knows.

“You lied to me.” And he can’t have imagined it, Thor’s voice shakes.

“I stayed alive. That is all I did.”

Thor brings his hands up to Loki’s wrists, skin now scarred in places from the cuffs, and rubs his thumbs over them. Loki lowers the food and leans forward to press his forehead to Thor’s. He shuts his eyes and breathes out, once. He feels Thor shudder out a heavy, weighted breath.

“Who are they?”

“Amora, Hoenir, and a man they call Skurge. He’s Amora’s guard, of sorts. They were bartered to us a long time ago.”

“For what?”

Loki shakes his head lightly, his nose pressing into Thor’s.

“It’s not important. The rest are coming.”

“When?” Thor asks, when Loki helps him stand.

He motions for Thor to undress, and starts the hose up to fill the basin.

Loki shrugs, because he has no idea.

Thor begins hosing himself down and Loki says, “When they do come, this is what we will do...”

\--

Loki towels him dry.

He’s so slow about it that it makes Thor go half hard by the end of it, and he isn’t shamed in the least. Loki says nothing of it, simply continues running his hands and the cloth over smooth, scrubbed skin.

“You’re so warm,” he breathes somewhere along the spread of his shoulder blade, and Thor thinks it wasn’t meant to be said aloud, so he doesn’t say anything in return.

Thor is reminded of worship, but keeps dutifully quiet.

Loki begins leaving small, dry kisses in his wake, all on his back, his collar, his neck, his chest. Thor is breathing hard and palming himself as he stands there, subject only to the cloth and the careful press of lips that Loki drags so slowly over his body.

“Loki...”

“I know,” he murmurs, and continues his work.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the wait! I made the overzealous decision to take summer courses to catch up on credits. And let me just say, I won't be sleeping much for the next year.
> 
> Also, guess what's going to probably be twelve chapters instead of ten?

The last dream Thor has before the end is a strange mirror of reality.

The room is brightly lit, and laid with clean tile and bright brick as if the basement was newly made. The light burns his eyes but he doesn’t close them. He can’t.

Loki stands before him in a dark suit, his hair slicked back. His eyes are white.

“You’re going to die once this is all over. You realize that.”

It’s almost a question and Thor pulls at his binds, anxious.

“Yes,” he says, the taste of blood in his mouth.

He blinks and then Stark is in Loki’s place, his hands clasped behind his back. His sunglasses are too dark and for once, he’s not grinning in that self satisfied way.

“You know the situation then, Thor.”

His eyes finally close and he feels Loki’s nails drag across his shoulders, somewhere behind him. Hidden.

“Yes.”

\--

Njord struts through Thor’s home like it’s his. Frey and Freyja, Njord’s bastard children, take up their mirrored mantle at the couch. Loki watches them walk about and move things that he’d seen Thor organize. They rifle through his CD’s, his stacks of movies he’d made Loki sit through, go through his fridge and throw things out. Amora had sent her guard to go pick up food, _better_ food. He watches them scoff and bicker and mock all the things he’d once mocked. This was Thor’s home, _his_ —

Loki bites his tongue until he swallows the tang of copper.

He hates them.

In the corner, watching him, is a woman with fire tied away from her face.

_Soon_.

\--

It took Njord and his people a full week to arrive. Two days to travel from Sweden and settle around the nearest town. Three more to observe the house and see if any government officials came by. Another two because they were fucking lazy and loved to drag things out. They loved pissing Loki off.

\--

Days before, when Amora comments on his lack of firearm, and then _laughs_ , Loki knows at least a small part of why they’re coming.

Why he’s still trapped there as much as Thor is.

\--

Loki was smart. The day before Njord came, he’d gone and taken Thor’s car and driven to the nearest mall and bought himself a suit and a green tie. The tie only because Amora hated that he wore them.

He drove slow, enjoying the breeze and the sun pouring through the window. Aside from him and another, white car, he was the only one on the road. He drove very slow.

He went to four different storage facilities. Amora didn’t trust him with any weapons, even though her thugs were very blatantly outfitted for a fight. Loki wasn’t sure what Njord intended to do, now that Laufey was dead. By Loki’s hand, no less. He’d seen people die for less. He had a pretty solid idea.

Thor was still alive after all. As was he.

That day the sun had been high and the heat dry enough to burn. He walked slower than he drove.

Around the third facility, the trunk of Thor’s car filled with a few weapons and the line of several blades strapped to his side beneath his shirt, he saw her.

Her red hair had been in a bun, and she wore sunglasses. Loki had smiled and waited.

“You killed Laufey.”

“Yes.”

There had been no sign of change in her face or stance, and Loki remembered being slightly impressed with her seeming indifference.

“And you haven’t killed Thor. Why?”

He’d continued loading up Thor’s trunk. “I didn’t want to.”

“You still don’t.”

“Things change.”

“You’re a halfway decent liar.” He laughed and she tilted her head to look over at the car. She looked inside the badly lit box of his storage and said, “Keep him alive. I have my people coming.”

“When?” He asked, frustrated.

“Soon.”

He drove faster on the way back. Natasha knew where to go.

\--

“Loki, it’s good to see you so well after what you went through,” Freyja says, fingers tickling along his wrist. She toys with the link of his cuff and smiles her one smile. He pulls his hand away, straightening his cuff and thinks of Thor in the basement.

She simply moves her hand to his shoulder, aware of his attempts to be rid of her touches and not caring in the least. Frey watches his sister with a frown.

“We heard you burned alive.”

“I look good for a dead man, then,” is all Loki says.

Frey’s frown grows deeper and his brow darkens. The blond of his lashes makes his eyes seem eerily wide even as he glares. “They took your father’s body. He’s sitting frozen in some federal morgue.”

“I am aware.”

Frey comes to loom over his shoulder. Freyja tilts her head back and smiles with gleaming teeth up at him. Her fingers scrape along his neck.

“Doesn’t bother you? They murdered your father, Loki.”

“Yeah?” Loki leans away from her searching fingers and she finally straightens in her seat. She crosses her legs at the knee and leans back, inviting. Loki stands. “Your father is pleased, I assume. Why else would you be here?”

Frey offers him a small smile. “Just like your mother.”

Loki goes cold and feels his jaw twitch. “Amusing, as you never knew her.”

“I—” Frey starts, but Njord chooses that moment to enter the room. He walks in through the front door with Amora trailing behind him. She’s smug about something and even before she starts walking to the basement door, he knows she’s up to something.

She holds up a paper bag that smells like something particularly fattening. She grabs for the knob.

“I’ll let you four talk.”

“Natalia,” Njord murmurs. The room goes silent and Amora’s smug smile cracks. “Accompany Amora will you.”

Natasha–Natalia— emerges from her corner, from the shadow, and walks to meet Amora. She takes the bag away from her and waits to follow. Loki feels something like nerves surge inside him, makes his fingers twitch.

“I am quite capable—”

“Won’t want your hands dirtied, will you? Go,” Njord says firmly.

Loki is keenly aware of the way the door shuts behind Amora as Njord faces him, his face weary and eyes pale blue. He looks like he hasn’t slept in years, save for the knowing, smirking lines about his mouth.

“You’ve been busy, Laufeyson.”

“You doubt me still.”

“You waste no time. Just like your father.”

Loki bites his tongue on an insult and says, “A likeness I feel I need to prove. Though ludicrous.”

Njord smiles gently, ignoring the insult, and asks, “That would require time. Is your day free?”

Loki shrugs. “More or less.” He brings his hand from his pocket and raises it to Njord.

Thor’s car keys dangle from his fingers and he smirks. “Is yours?” 

\--

Thor repeats Loki’s words to himself as a sort of routine. It’s the only one he has to count the hours away.

The key is in his pocket. Loki had put it there after the last he’d allowed him to bathe. That was days ago, and he hasn’t seen him since. There is another who brings his food. The one with a scar across his forehead. He never meets Thor’s eyes, and allows the fact Loki left one of his hands free.

They don’t touch him. They haven’t done anything to him, short of serving him food and refilling his water. They’re keeping him alive, and though he has ideas why, he isn’t sure. He worries for Loki.

He hasn’t seen Loki in days, what he thinks have been days. Thor has no idea if Loki is dead.

What if his plan failed? What was Thor to do then?

Thor hears the door creak open and shut too loudly for it to be Loki or the other one. He hears the click of heels and soon a pair of legs enters his sight. The woman from before. Amora.

And behind her is Natasha.

Thor has to fight to keep from staring, but it’s hard, so he chooses instead to glare at Amora. It is warranted after all.

_Nat’s been gone for two months. Clint’s getting worried._

“I’d nearly forgotten that day at the grocery,” Thor blurts, before he can help himself.

Behind Amora, Natasha’s eyes widen, and she shakes her head slowly.

But Amora doesn’t catch on. “What, you’re that delusional after a couple weeks?” She quirks a brow, and then turns to gesture Natasha forward.

“Food.” Natasha hands it to him and though they don’t comment on his use of his free hand, they do watch him fiddle with the contents for several minutes. It’s a hamburger and fries.

Natasha backs away into shadow as he bites into the burger, reveling the taste. Amora nears him and she smells like heat-swarmed flowers.

She watches him eat and then she crouches smoothly before him.

“Leave,” he says.

“Stubborn.” Her hands go to his knees, sliding slowly up his thighs. “I see now why Loki fancies you.”

He wants to wrench her hands away, stop her from touching him, from even speaking. Her reedy voice fills the room, and Thor feels like he needs his gun.

Natasha watches it all.

“I will not ask you again,” Thor forces out.

Amora squeezes the meeting of his thighs and he feels like growling at her.

“As if you are in a position to ask for anything,” she says, but then she is standing.

“Loki’s said a lot about you. You’re an interesting guy.”

He lowers his food to the floor. Thor knows Loki’s said nothing. Why would he?

Why would he not, his mind whispers back.

But no _no_ , it’s the pain and the absence of time and concept and—

He knows Loki’s plan.

She surprises him by grabbing his free wrist and bringing it up to curve around his neck, holding tight as she sits on his lap. She leans close and _pulls_ until his joint burns. Over his shoulder, Thor sees Natasha take a step forward. He gives her a look he hopes translates to _no_. Thankfully, she stops.

“Interesting, indeed. You look so strong, you could push me off if you wanted. But you don’t.” She crosses her knees, her free hand coming up to press fingers against his mouth. He wants to bite her. “So handsome too...”

Thor goes still as Amora pushes her thumb past his teeth.

He locks eyes with Natasha. She nods.

Thor twists his arm free and wraps it about her neck.

A door opens and all three of them watch as Loki descends the steps.

\--

Thor holds Amora by the neck, close, and the way he’s sitting forces her knees to slant awkwardly between his legs and the ground. Loki wonders why she’s sitting on his lap, but enjoys how red she’s gone in the face. Thor still has one hand cuffed to the beam through the chair and cannot stand, and Amora is screeching at him. Thor shakes her once. 

“Natalia,” questions a looming voice. “What is this?”

Njord enters the room like he crafted the very brick that laid the foundation. His pale eyes rake through it and he scratches at an earlobe as he finally looks at Thor.

Behind him trail his children, foolish despite the smart cut of their suits. Loki fingers his opposite palm and meets Natasha’s eyes before Njord can pass in front of him.

When he smirks to her, he can see Thor embody baleful fury from the corner of his sight. And it’s directed at Loki.

Amora is already barking at them before he can say anything else to Natasha.

“What the bloody hell is this? Loki, you never said he was like—”

“He held me captive for months. I thought it went without saying just how dangerous he can be.”

Njord says, “Perhaps if you took care not seduce the ones we keep we would not run into these circumstances.” He motions with a single finger to Frey to go and help.

Thor tightens his grip and snarls, “Why are you doing this?”

Njord puts a hand up and Frey stills.

“You know.”

Thor pauses. And Loki wants desperately to meet his eyes. To see each other in this moment. To see if he remembers what Loki told him.

But Thor keeps his gaze on Njord and says, “Because I killed Laufey.”

Njord claps once, and grins wide. “Correct. And I thank you for this.”

Thor looks surprised, and almost jostles Amora for it.

Amora has long since stopped clawing at his hand, and is simply holding his forearm now. She’s so red in the face still that when Thor shakes her again, just once, she lets out something like a choked sob.

“Why thank me?”

Njord hums, slow. “Because, when you killed Laufey, I took his place. Young Loki here...Hm, perhaps I have spoken too soon. I still wish to know more of you before the day is out.”

Loki feels his heart sing and his stomach drop all at once. His hands prickle where he traces his palm. He cannot take his eyes off Thor.

He needs this to work.

“What are you talking about?” Thor demands.

“I want you to come with us for a while. I’d like to talk to you.”

Thor’s lip curls, feral. “Where?” He jostles Amora once more, who closes her eyes. “You’re not going to kill me, so what do you want?”

Njord steps forward. Loki has to raise an arm up to stop Frey from moving forward. Frey is glaring at him, but is pulled away when Freyja tugs on his arm.

Njord comes to stand just before Thor and he’s not even looking at Amora. “I want to talk to you.”

Thor makes a point to look at Njord, meet his eyes, then his children’s. When he meets Loki’s eyes, Loki swallows hard. Then he slides his gaze to Natasha and it holds.

Thor looks back up to Njord, though Loki feels the question echoes to another.

“You’re bringing everyone then?”

_Soon_.

Njord smiles again. “I want to talk with you. That is all, Thor Odinson.”

There is a moment longer spent staring each other down, weighing options.

And then Loki speaks.

“Come now, you can manage to speak with your old captive a last time, can’t you?”

Thor doesn’t look at him. Not for one moment. Something in Loki twists and he drops his hands.

Thor releases Amora, and she half falls before catching herself on her side. Frey rushes to help her stand, Freyja right behind him.

“You’re a fucking animal!” she croaks.

Thor meets Loki’s eyes and Loki fights the curve that threatens to mold his lips into a smirk.

“I am not the only one,” Thor says.


	11. Chapter 11

_“Listen to Njord. He likes to talk.”_

Thor hears Loki, hears him so clearly. But it’s like wading through thick, cloudy fog. He can’t see anything.

_“They’ll use you. They’ll use me. If it comes to a fight, go for Skurge first, the big asshole with the crooked nose. Focus on Skurge. On the ones I point out to you.”_

Thor feels heat sear along his arm and his face and he’s burning again. So close to dying, to burning alive. He’s back there on that first day, when everything started.

_“Leave Amora to me.”_

Thor hears himself ask who, who is coming.

_“Everyone.”_

\--

The dream fades into reality on the breadth of a wire, thin and twanging loudly silent to everyone there. Or maybe Thor woke feeling oddly tuned into it. He isn’t sure. A hasty moment of pause tells him they’re jostling along in the back of a van, Loki’s thigh pressed tightly to his beside him.

The two Thor recognizes from before sit across from them and while the man is staring right at him, the woman is watching Loki. She has a hawkish set to her angular face, and it matches the man’s, save no stubble.

“How long?” Thor tries, but is silenced when the blond man kicks his shin.

He grunts groggily, ready to fight, but as soon as he tips up his head is swimming and his vision blurs.

Loki presses his leg closer against his, a pressure that grounds him, and then he relaxes. It could be attributed to the drive, bumping along as it is, but no. Purpose, Loki always acts with purpose. A trait he tries to absorb in this moment. Thor focuses on steadying his breathing, on the drive. The press of gravity on every turn or stop. Tries to figure out where they’re headed without giving his thoughts away.

Loki breaks the silence. “Three hours.”

“To or from?” Thor huffs out, shifting and biting his tongue before meeting the glare of the blond across from him. His head is heavy and he realizes finally they must have drugged his food, his water.

“To go,” Loki says. “Sleep is preferable.”

“Kind to his pet, isn’t he, Freyja?” the blond says, curling his lip. Thor realizes for the first time, their voices are slightly accented, but he can’t tell from where.

“He is, brother,” Freyja agrees. Her smile is dull but vicious. The flat at the tip of her nose raises up and Thor is reminded of a cat, a beautiful cat.

“Save talk for when we get there. Besides, your tongue works cleverer words inside your sister, Frey,” Loki says calmly.

While Thor shifts in his seat and tries to focus his sight into a single line, Frey looks ready to lunge for him right there. His sister only laughs. Thor can’t quite process why she takes the subtle insinuation so calmly. Like she doesn’t mind.

“Loki, I’ve missed you, really. You’re too funny for America, you need to come to Sweden more often.”

Thor listens to the exchange despite his sight still swerving. It’s easier to focus on the turns now, and he knows in the back of his mind that there is no way he’s getting back to sleep. Not unless they sedate him again.

Loki shrugs his shoulders and then looks to the floor. He goes quiet and stares at his hands. Thor hangs his head and watches how Loki plays with the crease of his palms, the bend of his fingers. The way nail meets flesh meets the pinched knob of the knuckle, reaching back to the veins that disappear beneath his shirt cuffs. His skin is pale, nearly grey under the light filtered through the van and his nails glint dully as he twists and turns his hands together. Thor wants to reach out and still him, to feel him. But he won’t. He can’t.

Loki is anxious, and it is exactly that that calms Thor enough to realize they’re still in this together.

\--

When they arrive at their destination, they don’t do anything Thor expected they would. They don’t tie a sack about his head, they don’t shoot him and stuff him in the truck, they don’t threaten him with Loki’s torture or his own. They don’t call him on his lies. They do none of these things.

They don’t care that as soon as he steps onto the hard, gravelly sand beneath his feet that he knows exactly where he is and how far away from the closest town they are. Close enough that to look down into the dry, weed-dotted valley he can see traffic. They don’t care that his hands are free and that he can see their faces. And there are a lot of faces. At the very least twenty men and some women.

Cars are scattered around, mostly vans and some nondescript cars you see every day. Nothing to catch the eye. What does catch his eye is his own car, a dash of familiar color near the van they stepped out of. Natasha is leaning against it, and while everyone is focused on their arrival, she gives him the slightest of nods. It does nothing to still his tension.

But Loki stands beside him. A presence that buries the fear because it qualifies it.

It’s only made certain when Thor watches Njord step up to greet his children. Njord spares a hug each, a tenderness Thor never expected. His children accept the hugs and separate from their father neatly, Freyja adjusting her suit jacket.

Njord doesn’t even look at Loki, whose hands are twitching and whose jaw is tensing like a roil of steel.

Amora is in the crowd, a bright sway of gold and green amongst the many somber faces. A mix of scars and tattoos and injuries Thor hasn’t seen too often in his line of work. Which is saying a lot.

Loki glances over to him, catches his eye. They hold it long enough for it to be casual, but the light catches on Loki’s chin, illuminating the sheen of his scar quickly before disappearing again. Thor swallows hard.

Njord takes three steps back, turns, and looks straight at Thor. The crowd around them surges mildly, mingling, ambling, moving like a creature that’s waiting. A blood hungry creature.

Natasha is a sudden presence approaching Loki, a bright red dash against the sunlight and though her eyes are downcast, her jaw is tense. Thor sees her press a gun into Loki’s hands, and Loki, for all his meticulous planning up until now, looks confused.

“What is this? Mockery?” he spits across to Njord.

Njord raises a finger, slow, and points to Thor.

“For our talk.”

\--

Thor’s heart is a flutter that permeates through his ribs and his skin feels stretched. He can feel the muscle of his arms coil and twitch and he forces his fingers into fists before they give away his nerves.

The gun Loki now holds is an extension of his arm as he gestures vaguely to the group of people, his people, people he may have once considered his family. He’s furious but trying to keep his expression even for those watching. Thor sees it in the way he sets his jaw.

“You’ve driven us here, to this destitute scab, to hold court? You flew from Sweden to see if the rumors were true?”

“Only the ones that said you killed Laufey and ran. Unlike you, I admit, but I had to know.”

Loki steps closer to Njord and though several other menacing looking men near from the back, to protect their leader, Njord does nothing. He doesn’t even appear concerned, and that, above everything, worries Thor the most. The familiarity is what gets him.

That and the gun.

Natasha is a shadow beside him, silent with her stare focused on Njord and Loki. They’re talking quietly now, and Thor can only catch the whispers of rushed voices. He strains to hear, but to walk any closer would surely mean to be shot and killed. He wonders how much he can get away with here.

So instead Thor asks her, “You were with them all along, then?”

“Yes. And I know you’re lying. Lying to the new drug lord of several countries you haven’t ever been to.” She shifts her weight to the other foot. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

“No,” Thor says, because it’s true. “But Loki thinks it’ll work.”

She hums at him and they notice from across the way that Freyja is watching them instead of her father. They go silent for a while and Thor tries once more to catch onto fragments of conversation. It’s like trying to listen to a muffled television in the next room and it’s infuriating.

“There are loaded guns in your trunk,” Natasha whispers when Freyja looks away. “Loki made a run a few days ago.”

“Why?” Thor murmurs, still perplexed how she even managed to worm her way into their organization, if it could be called that. He’d have all the answers by the end of this. He’s tired of being kept in the dark, of not knowing the details.

“Why do you think?”

“Stark told me Clint’s worried.”

“I know he is,” is all she says. Then she goes quiet again as Amora approaches.

The words offer him a ledge of hope and he clings, wanting with growing impatience to know more. He needs to know if Fury managed to contact her, if Clint is here. If everyone is here, or on their way? Anything, anything—

But now Amora is here and he bites his tongue hard enough to sting. She stands a safe distance apart from him, but she holds his glare despite her obvious caution. Pride, Thor knows. The large brute behind her is Skurge, silent and observing.

“It’s sure to be a climactic spectacle,” Amora remarks in such an offhanded way that Thor lets out a bemused grunt.

The look she gives him is skewered amusement, but Thor can’t muster the will to be troubled by it. His thoughts are on the trunk of his car.

If it comes to it, they’re ten feet from a fighting chance.

The gun arcs in languid waves as Loki continues to speak animatedly, rare for him.

Perhaps Loki is a few feet closer to his chance than Thor.

\--

The wait continues slowly. Loki and Njord are still speaking in the middle of those gathered. Enough time has passed that eventually, Thor can see many of Njord’s gathered men begin to murmur to each other.

Loki’s voice raises then in a quick burst and Thor can hear “—I’m not doing it!” The gun is a glint aimed at the sun.

Njord dips his head, chews on his lip. He peers around Loki, hand on his hip in a decidedly too human way for Thor to completely stomach compared to the stoic, mob boss persona he’s seen so far. He stares at Thor for a long moment, and just when Loki turns, he flicks his wrist. Thor has the sudden pressure of what seems like a hundred eyes on him as he’s moved to walk forward, to the center of all this.

“What?” Thor asks as soon as he’s beside Loki. Loki juts his lower jaw forward, clicking it once before angling his head away.

Njord purses his lips in strained patience. “You have a lot of questions. I do as well.”

“Then ask them, before we bake in this heat,” Thor forces out, trying to stop himself from simply launching at the man and settling this.

The man isn’t phased. “Laufey was shot, we know. After he burnt down your facilities. Your men.”

“And women. Those were my friends he killed,” he bites out.

Njord continues as if he never spoke. “And so you shot him. With no thought to the repercussions.”

“There didn’t have to be. It was done before I could think on it.” True enough.

Njord’s clear eyes slide to Loki before settling on Thor again. Finally, he says, so slowly, “Obviously.” Like he’s made a decision before Thor even knows what decisions were to be made.

“My son is concerned that you took Loki with you. He’s been trying to figure out why. He thinks something perverse has derived from it.”

Loki barks a sour laugh, just one, and glances at Thor before looking straight to Njord. “Your children _would_ know of perversities. The fact of it is, these rumors your family taped together are but that; rumors.” Thor is keenly aware of how Loki leaves out the injuries his own people had given him that day. That Thor is the one who saved his life.

Thor works his jaw before saying, resolute, “I am not a beast.”

The words are rancid on his tongue before he even finishes the sentence.

Njord considers them both before motioning to Loki. A minor incline of his head and it has Loki walking away some yards, standing in silence and waiting. A forced surrender, if only temporary. Thor wonders if Loki will be straining to hear as he had.

“I don’t believe you. You’re both liars. Loki killed his father and for whatever reason you dragged him to your little house. You mistook his place in your home as a mutual benefit.” His voice is lower even than when he’d been speaking to Loki in hushed tones before.

Thor stills, heartbeat even and heavy for the first time since this began. It feels like he’s sinking into the gravel, and his bones ache for it. He remembers the loping beast of his dreams and thinks of the way his name sounds coming in soft mutters from Loki when he’s in a rare dead sleep. The weight of it is unbearable.

Njord shrugs. “Maybe it was, who knows. The kid’s fucked up. I’m sure you’ve seen.” Thor bristles at that, wants to take the man’s throat between his hands and _break_ , and it’s an urge so sudden and violent it’s staggering. He shakes his head from the force of it, and Njord smiles at it, misunderstanding the reason. “It hardly matters either way, now that Laufey is dead. I don’t care which one of you did it, I’m where I need to be.”

“You didn’t fly out here to get the facts straight, then?” Thor wonders.

Those clear, tired eyes are those of a shark and Thor knows his answer. “No. I was curious. The past is the past after all.”

“There has to be more to it. You wouldn’t have brought your men here if it was only curiosity that brought you.”

“You look a brute, but you’re smarter than your appearance, I will admit. I came to tie the threads he cut. Laufey had a thing for killing people and then ignoring the consequences.” Thor swallows hard and Njord takes the moment to let it drag out. He’s sweeping his gaze across those behind Thor now. “He’s taken many people from many sides, even his own.”

Njord sighs and says, “He’s left a lot of scars, I suppose you could say.”

Like Helblindi, Thor thinks. Parts of Loki’s earlier story from weeks ago makes more sense, and he asks, “You worked with him?”

“No. Not really. There was a time in Scandinavia, in Strömstad, but our tryst was severed when he decided to be bold and fly here. The courts were not happy.”

“Court?”

Njord smiles, eyes shining. “He killed who he wanted. A few lawyers, competitors, family.” Another shrug that’s too casual, too businesslike for Thor to be comfortable. “He didn’t care.”

“So this was before...?” Thor trails off, turning to see Loki. He’s beside Natasha now. Another detail he’s missing. How did Natasha even know Loki?

“Loki? Laufey had many children. Many women. I could make an encyclopedia if I wanted.” And then he is laughing, and some men stir, startled. Thor can’t bring himself to find it funny. He knows what it’s like to have a father who slept around.

“Farbauti contacted me when Loki was born, for I had only just been married. I had two children just years before Loki’s birth, so it was a series of interspersed letters and calls. Laufey didn’t know.”

“Childhood friends?” It seems so ridiculous, to have something as normal as friends in the middle of being raised by warring drug lords.

“I was saddened to hear that she had passed some months ago...” The thing that caught Thor was that he sounded genuine. It made him wonder what sort of relationship Loki’s mother and Njord had. Something he wonders if even Loki would know the truth of. “Not so sad to hear of Laufey’s though.”

“You really don’t care who killed Laufey? What about his body?”

“Sweden wants it for a past transgression,” he says, pausing.

“And?”

“Laufey and I started and ended many contracts together. It is because of me he had the funds to start his own line, and it is because of him I stretched my reach beyond that of only Sweden. The market in South America is unbelievable, you know.”

“You just—”

“You’re confused, I see it in your eyes. Our mutual ventures ended when he decided to leave Scandinavia behind. Had we both left, we would have been hunted and killed. I stayed behind and paid his way, kept his papers and the government from looking too closely. A last act of loyalty between old friends.”

“He still screwed you over.”

Njord chuckled at that, eyes crinkling. “Yes, he did. Another reason I am here. You have Northern heritage, I know it from your name and your face. In the North there are pacts, there are loyalties earned and owed. You do not break a tryst unless it is in death or money.”

Njord shifts and takes a step to the left, watching the ground now. He walks around Thor slowly, and it feels like he’s been put on for show.

“You’re here because Laufey owed you money,” Thor says.

“And product.”

“I thought you didn’t work together anymore. For decades.” He says it slow, dread curling low in his belly.

“I had men here, I am not a fool. I had eyes where Laufey had eyes.” He speaks a smooth line of Swedish and it sounds like jumbled English to Thor, yet he can’t pick it apart. “The burdened will fall. And fall he did.” He circles back around into Thor’s line of sight once more and he sees the man’s mouth set in a firm line. “I paid him not in coin but in product. And someone has been stealing that product for a long while now.”

Thor’s mind is screaming to turn, run and grab Loki. To get the gun and shoot until they’re free. Take his car and leave before Njord knows that Loki is the one. The one who’d been stealing, had killed Laufey.

“And as I said, Laufey killed who he wanted. In his fury he killed many of his own, his wife, Farbauti, included.” Njord pauses here, glancing about to catch the eye of his children, who nod where they stand. The crowd of people begins to shift and swell and once more it assumes the role of swarming creature, dark and calculating, waiting for instruction.

“Laufey killed a few of my men in his rampage. Taking his throne here in America and adding it to mine in Sweden would simply be due reimbursement.”

Thor takes a step back, thoughts turning, melding, and he thinks he knows now the part he is to play. Why he is here. Why Loki is here—

Loki is calling his name, and there is the sound of steps, hurried and kicking up dust.

“I don’t care if you or Loki killed his father. I really don’t. But a trait I have never shared with Laufey is that I always cut my threads when they are meant to be cut.”

A pause. “I handed Loki his redemption and he refused it.” Thor knows he means the gun. Knows why he was called forward after Loki yelled his defiance. Thread. They’re both thread to Njord.

He meets Thor’s eyes, mouth sedate for the first time since Thor’s seen him. A finality. Then gunshots pierce the sky, rending the swarming, massive hum of silence apart in a burst of metal and fire.

Fire lances through his thigh just as he feels Loki grab viciously for his arm, breath a hot and panicked thread beating strong against his temple as he’s half dragged, half pulled back. Away from Njord.

It feels like the ocean has met the sky, and the pain blocks out the drowning only barely.

\--

It’s a blur of movement and shouting and the distant whir of what Thor knows is a helicopter. He’s been shot in the leg, he doesn’t know who by, just knows it wasn’t Loki. Loki, who has his hands hooked under his arms and is dragging him back for all he’s worth. Natasha is waving her arms to the sky, gun held in her hand, and then she’s dodging bullets whirring through the air.

“Fuck all, Njord knows how to play sides,” Loki spits with the effort, hauling Thor against the shadowed side of his car. Natasha crouches behind the van parked just across.

“He meant to kill us from the beginning,” Thor says, gripping his leg tight. The bone wasn’t hit at least, he thinks. “Did you see who shot me?”

Loki is peering over the hood of Thor’s car, hand gripping tight into his shirt. Thor can feel Loki’s pulse beat hard through his palm. He’s sweating.

“Amora. She had some sign from Njord but it wasn’t meant to kill. I don’t—because I couldn’t—”

The whir of a helicopter is back, blasting the area with unmistakable chaos. The wind is whipped until it burns the skin, dirt flying everywhere, and the _gunfire_.

“Stark!” Natasha calls over to them, matter-of-fact.

Thor, against the pain radiating through his leg like a wire threaded burn, gets to his side and turns to see.

A helicopter flies as close to the ground as it can without entirely landing, whipping dirt and rocks everywhere. The barrel of a military grade machine gun swerves around, spotting the ground with metal and those who are too slow to get out of its way.

Tony Stark is a smiling figure in bright shades behind it. Thor sees other figures moving behind him, maybe Clint or Fury, possibly even Steve, but he can’t tell from so far away.

The clearing is filled with shouting and sporadic bursts of weak gunfire, then the overwhelming chain-link click of what can easily be called a mounted cannon in comparison. Njord and his people scatter, taking what little cover there is. Natasha shoots a man who comes up behind her by sticking the barrel into his stomach. Blood splatters slick across her neck and hands from how close they are, but she pays no mind, whipping back around and taking stock of the clearing and what it’s become.

The vans provide enough cover that most who came are still in hiding. The helicopter ascends once more, and Thor knows they’re only surveying how best to go about what to do next without killing Thor and Natasha in the process. He still isn’t sure what they think of Loki.

“Open the trunk, I need a gun,” Thor says, pushing himself to kneeling. He braces his hands on the wheel and listens to who he knows is hiding around them.

“How did—” Loki starts, then shuts his mouth when Natasha quickly crosses to their side. She crouches behind them, gun held tight to her side.

“Njord is two cars down, shot in the arm. Amora, Skurge, and Frey are three cars to our left and across the way is Freyja. She’s hurt.”

Loki pops the trunk from the driver’s side of the car and Thor shoves himself to one knee. He manages to move enough to get inside his own trunk without being directly exposed. Searching around he sees Loki came prepared. Enough guns to rob a large bank. When he raises a brow, Loki just shrugs.

“Once the smoke clears, throw another of these,” Natasha says abruptly, handing them each a canister.

They both watch, the words Thor is about to ask dying on his tongue, as Natasha launches a small object. It bounces and rolls to the far side of the clearing and smoke erupts, whipped up quickly into the air.

There’s a startled “What the hell, man!” from somewhere beyond as the smoke swirls into the sky. Loki goes and gathers his own weapon while Thor digs around for a grenade.

“Njord knew we were lying from the beginning. He knew. You were right, it really did all go to shit.”

Loki waits until Thor’s done gathering what he needs and helps him stand. Thor steadies himself for walking. Loki doesn’t ask him if he needs help walking, Loki doesn’t ask needless questions.

“Of course I was. Now, let us find Njord and put an end to this.”

\--

They go slow. So slow, Thor can feel the blood dripping down his leg through his pants. It hurts, but soon the methodical pressure of walking with the piercing of pain becomes an expected thing. An ache that bleeds hot. Loki stays close, the pistol from before jutting out the belt at his waist, an automatic gripped tight in his hands.

“Down,” Natasha whispers, walking ahead. They near the rear of another van, and she goes ahead and sidles around the door.

There’s voices, a metallic thump, and two shots. Then Natasha peers around the side and waves them forward.

Two men lie dead, and Thor has no idea who they are. He’s never been in a firefight, not like this. Waiting it out for one guy is much different than skirting past unmarked cars filled with men wanting to kill you. Different even than almost burning alive while his friends died around him.

This was suspense and fear and threat and adrenaline, and Thor felt his blood pulse hotter for it.

His hands are steady and his heartbeat even for the first time in months.

They round the next bumper, crouching now because it’s more exposed. The helicopter swings back around and while a line of bullets rain down the other side of the clearing, they find Amora and Skurge.

Frey is a few yards apart from the chaos as Amora fires two shots. First at Thor, missing, then at Loki. Loki drops to the ground and Thor panics for all of a moment before Loki is quickly skidding behind the back wheel of the car.

Natasha charges Amora and knocks her down before Frey has his arms around her waist, hauling her up and back, throwing her out of the way. Amora is only just standing when Natasha gets the grip of her pistol and rams it into Frey’s head, dropping him. She kicks his weapon into the dip beside the clearing, and whips out of the way as Amora grabs for her.

But then Skurge is before him, and in that moment Thor can do nothing but think it an appropriate alias. The man doesn’t even need a weapon, as he launches angry fists at Thor’s sides and stomach.

Thor rages forward and, bracing his leg in spite of the agony lancing through it, throws a fist into the man’s side, hoping for a kidney. He staggers back, and Thor doesn’t spare the thought for process before he brings up his own pistol and shoots the man’s leg. There are cries of pain, but Thor steels himself. The fight, he’s missed the fight.

Another chain of gunfire from the helicopter, warning shots, and Thor can see the few left alive darting between cars, their eyes wide. They hadn’t expected this either.

“Loki?” Thor says, turning. Skurge is gripping his leg, his knee, trying to keep pressure on the wound.

Loki is standing and aiming his gun at Amora, who Natasha has managed to zip tie her wrists together. She lies in the dirt and the dust and her lip is split, but she spits at Loki as she sees him approach her.

Loki holds the gun out, steady and level and aimed at her head. Loki will shoot her. Thor knows Loki will shoot her.

Thor doesn’t even think, he rushes for Loki as fast as he can with a pained limp, and calls his name. He grabs his arm and shoves it up, into the air. Loki turns on him, and oh, he is furious.

“Njord. Njord is still here. Natasha has Amora, Loki, don’t—don’t do this,” he pleads, squeezing Loki’s wrist until Loki is sneering at him, wrenching his arm out of his reach.

There are a thousand different furies there, in his face, and Thor can only understand a handful of them. Then Loki snaps that vicious green away and turns his back to Thor.

Thor remembers the haunted look in Loki’s face when he told him Laufey’s last words. He remembers that well. He doesn’t want that again, doesn’t want Loki affected like that.

But the relief is replaced by a single shot rocketing through the clearing. The sound is deafening.

Shock roots him to the ground, and not even the pain can shake him in that moment.

Loki walks on, promised wrath clear upon his brow.

Thor swallows hard, losing what few words he’s just managed to grasp. He can feel Natasha’s eyes on him. He nods, to no one, and continues after Loki. To keep him safe, to find Njord. To end this and go home. With Loki. Only Loki.

Skurge lies bleeding and silent.

Amora cries facing the sky, Frey unconscious beside her.

\--

The smoke persists until they’re walking through a long pull of it. It’s musty, and Thor remembers he never liked the smell. Natasha moves as a shadow behind them, steps silent and posture professional in a way Thor envied sometimes.

But now he only appreciates it. Appreciates that she moves so quickly and quietly that when the helicopter does another sweep around their end with Clint sliding down on a rope, the noise was hardly substantial at all.

Thor grips Loki’s elbow, stilling him as Clint approaches. Loki looks ready to snap, to pull that trigger again, and again. Thor knows that look well.

He crowds Loki’s space, holding his eyes. “No needless killing. Not anymore.” Focus on me, he tries to say.

Loki says nothing.

“The fuck are you guys doing moping around down here? We have the bird, let’s go!” Clint practically barks at them when he’s only a few paces away. He holds a military issue rifle in hand, a large sleek bow over his back with quiver. There are a pair of goggles around his neck.

“They’re after Njord. He’s still alive somewhere down here,” Natasha answers for them. Loki is staring at the dirt beneath their feet, gun gone slack in his grasp. “I have two ready for transport at thirteen yards north. Fifteen bodies up.”

Clint nods his approval and speaks in a rush to a collar at his neck. A comm. Above them, the helicopter circles like a hawk tracking prey. Thor sees that Stark is no longer heading the machine gun. Another nameless figure dressed head to toe in the black fatigues of SHIELD is there instead.

Clint nods once more before turning back and jerking a thumb at Thor and Loki both.

“There isn’t a kill order on Njord, you know.”

“There isn’t one against it, either,” Natasha murmurs to him.

Clint stares at her, eyes flicking over her face. He hasn’t seen her in months, and it shows in the way he huffs finally, deflating.

He speaks into the comm again. “It’s a go, sir.” A pause as he regards them once more, pulling up his goggles. “Tango Zulu, twenty yards Northwest. Eighteen back is green and good to go. Ten minutes.”

“Five,” Natasha says, smiling. She nods to Thor, and he returns it with a slight tilt of his head. She’s going with Clint to handle the rest.

Njord is left for them.

Loki turns and keeps on.

\--

Two more cars and a large uprising of rock face is all it takes before Loki is hoisting his gun and firing.

“Get out here!”

Njord is a heavily breathing, shifting mass behind the jut of rock. Thor sees there is red staining the ground, not enough for a fatal injury, but it tells them Njord is hurt, and not by Loki. Loki fired at the rock, and it broke off in a loud crack. To scare Njord.

But Njord is still quiet, and Thor can feel the threat hang in the air. Njord is waiting because he thinks there’s still a fighting chance. Njord is armed.

Loki steps closer, Thor right beside him. Thor wants to step in front of him, take the burden of Njord from his mind. But that’s not an option, and he knows Loki needs this. At least a part of it.

“Your mother would have been pleased to see Laufey dead. It would have left her free to return home,” Njord calls from where he’s hidden. Loki juts his jaw, gaze trained on where Njord will eventually have to reveal himself.

“Home died with her.” Loki takes a step but Thor forces him back and still, hand unrelenting on his arm. He squeezes hard enough to hurt and Loki says nothing for it.

“Sweden, child. Her home was always in Sweden.” And Njord _laughs_.

Loki fires another shot without moving from Thor’s side. Its aim is off and strikes the ground, kicking up a quick, harsh spread of dirt and dust.

Njord’s laugh dies off. He says, “A moment, I would see your face.”

Loki is a seething, incomprehensible _calm_ beside Thor that Thor has to fight to see his chest rise with breath. Njord is a bloodied, rumpled mess. His nose is bleeding and his lip is split, his smart suit stained in red. He holds only a knife.

Njord smirks at the sight of Thor with him, but says nothing about it. The mocking is clear in his eyes, the way he angles his head.

“She was probably waiting for you, her coke skimming runt, to have his face stolen. Like Laufey’s first. He probably would have, if things hadn’t gone the way they had.”

“You know nothing of his mother,” Thor says, palm sweating where he holds the grip of his gun.

“I know more than you, Odinson. But I think I would be correct in assuming we both know at least a single fact of her death.”

Loki’s gun is raising.

Njord pins Loki with a somber grin. An oncoming wave of cruelty. “She died because of you.”

Thor sees Njord charge forward before Loki can get his arm up completely. He shoves Loki aside, shot ringing off somewhere to the side of them, and meets Njord head on.

The man is tall, but considerably smaller than Thor is. He watches for the knife as he jabs crudely for Thor’s stomach, and twists Njord around, onto the ground.

But Njord is clever, and knows how to fight, and just as there is a tearing into his side, he sees Loki crawl for his gun. Reaching, reaching, pulling back and aiming.

He meets Thor’s eyes, no emotion there in his face.

Thor feels blood reach his skin, warmth seeping through his shirt, his pants, and passes out to the tangy smell of copper and anger. It’s slow, then, and it hurts.

The last thing he sees is Loki standing. the back of his legs as he turns around. Loki takes the gun with him.

Thor fades to the sound of Loki saying his name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go.


	12. Epilogue

It’s through a deluge of voices and needles pricking into his skin that Thor wakes up.

The first time he’s too groggy, too drugged, and in too much pain to move. He remembers his head lolling to the side, cushioned by a flat pillow. The face of a woman hovering over him, her gloves stained red.

The second time is to the sound of Fury’s voice. He was muttering but still, Thor knew. Sun had flooded the room. There were other voices, mentions of timelines and countries, but he couldn’t quite pick apart the words.

The third time his eyes ached and his heart thundered.

In the chair on the other side of the room was a figure, reclined. Silent but not asleep.

“Loki...?”

Thor remembers his heart leaping to his throat before passing out to the feeling of being swallowed by shadows.

\--

It’s dark when he finally wakes up, coherent and heart tired in a way he can’t really name. He’d risen from dreams filled with lulling dark and hazy fog that rolled through the creases of his thoughts like fire, keeping his sight from the face he wanted to see.

It is Fury there, sitting on the edge of his bed. The one who had drawn him from sleep in the first place. Thor just meets his expectant stare with one of his own, and his throat aches.

“Njord?” he croaks, wanting to ask for another but knowing he can’t.

“Dead.”

Thor’s relieved at that, but it doesn’t sate the clawing in his gut. The worry. He wants to know what happened. He wants to know where Loki is.

Fury stands as Thor shifts to sitting up. He can feel a tube pull at the bend of his arm, and it’s a strange sort of pressure pinned there. Aside from that, there’s a tempered ache pulsing through his side and his leg, and he knows it’s from the fight.

Fury is speaking before he has a chance to puncture the waning silence himself.

“The twins won’t talk and that blonde, she’s a mess like she is. Crying and just...” Fury makes a gesture of his face dragging off and he shrugs. “But plenty of secrets to tell. You did good.”

It wasn’t me, Thor thinks. He holds his tongue, flicks his gaze between Fury’s patch and good eye. His hands keep still, concentrates on the pulse of blood surrounding the entry point of the needle in his arm. Pulsing medicine through him.

“How long?” he prompts.

“You’re gonna be in here for a few more weeks at least, no used trying to talk your way out of it. Get back out in the field, right?”

Thor swallows, slick and sharp and he can hear it. Too loud in his own head. He says, “Not exactly.”

An eyebrow arches and Thor knows he’s surprised Fury. “You don’t want a job up in Nevada? Like old times?”

“There were no old times. I never worked for you. Not really.” Thor swallows and lowers his eyes to stare at the sheets pooled around his lap. “I’ll do something else.”

“Like what?”

Find Loki, his mind whispers. But he says, “Travel. I’ve never been to Europe.”

Fury grunts, neither accepting nor disapproving, and walks to the window of his room. He pulls the curtains back and sunlight creeps through in a solid beam, slow across the carpeted floor. Machines whir around them and it seems so deafening then, Thor has a hard time hearing his own thoughts.

“The kid took off. We think he’s in Brazil, but we can’t be sure. Natasha’s doing some digging.”

“Natasha,” Thor echoes. Natasha, who helped them.

“I was going to send you out once you could walk. But,” Fury says softly, turning to meet Thor’s eyes, “Guess that’s a no go.”

Thor knows it’s a ploy, he knows. And still, words leap to his mouth waiting to spill out, to say yes, to find Loki.

But then Loki would be in the hands of Fury and he doesn’t want that. Not at all.

He thinks of he and Loki pressing back against the rock surrounded by waves and his chest does a painful squeeze. He wants that day back. He wants Loki.

Thor wants a lot of things.

Fury is looking out the window again, posture relaxed, accepting Thor’s refusal for what it is.

“He killed two drug lords, Thor. We can’t just let him go.”

It’s like a splash of water, cold, stark, and refreshing and he laughs. Thor laughs and from his spot at the window, Fury just shakes his head.

“Maybe you do need a vacation.”

\--

It’s four months later and Thor is tapping his foot on the bar of a stool, thumb folding the edge of a napkin again and again, over and under, as he watches out the floor to ceiling window. People pass by in casual conversation, some silent, some looking too angry for a sunny afternoon. It’s hot for once and he feels the dip between his shoulders sweat beneath the thin sweater he wears.

The cadence of Boston surrounds him and he keeps quiet through it, watching out the window. He has a table marker before him, still needing to order and having to insist that he doesn’t need anything, not yet. He’s waiting for someone.

It’s a sunny afternoon and it’s been three hours and Thor feels his stomach flip before finally, he pushes off the stool and leaves. The door tinkles behind him like it’s mocking him, his hopefulness. And still that ache persists, and he’s sick of it. So sick of it.

He used to like this once.

“Goddamn fool,” he mutters to himself, passing the shop and continuing on.

The people surge and part around him, some glancing at him, most keeping out of his way.

It’s when he passes an alley, a dark figure slouched against the wall with a cigarette between his fingers that his heart stutters. Thor nearly trips over himself, and stares down that dark backstreet because he knows. He knows.

A spark of orange flicks off the end of the cigarette and floats to the ground, and the person rolls his shoulders, straightening. Chin dipping, he stares at the ground for a short while, like he’s stuck between falling and bringing that flame back to his lips. He turns to head out to the street and Thor sees him stop, tense, all in the shoulders. The fall of his mouth like he’s surprised.

Thor’s rushing forward before he can stop himself.

His back meets the wall as Thor’s hands tangle in his hair, the cigarette falling to the ground.

Loki’s hands shake as they touch his face and he says Thor’s name. A soft breath feathering light along his mouth.

It’s been four months and Loki tastes the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the end everyone, we made it! This has received so much wonderful feedback, it's astounding. I just really love you all, and am so happy you enjoyed reading it as I enjoyed writing it. It means the world to me. <3


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